Welcome to the 2019 Predictive Analytics World (PAW) Conference Series. Recorded live in Las Vegas, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews James Taylor, CEO of Decision Management Solutions.

Find James Online:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn

Decision Management Solutions

[00:02]

My guest today is James Taylor.  We are live at Predictive Analytics World, Marketing Analytics World.  His business is Decision...

[00:11]  

Management Solutions.

[00:14]  

Got it.  You are chairing a track today.  

[00:18] 

Yeah, I’m monitoring the business track.  I’m kicking it off right after the keynotes, and then I’m monitoring it for the next couple of days.

[00:24]  

That’s great.  Obviously, you know who’s on the panel.

[00:28]

Yeah, there’s a panel; there’s a whole bunch of presenters.  It tends to be the ones who are not so much talking about how to build a predictive analytic model so much as how to use a predictive analytics model:  how to put it into production, how to get people to adopt it, what the challenges are, getting people to understand what a model does, and those non-modeling kinds of things. 

[00:49]

Which actually the better that goes, the bigger the lever of the model, right?  I mean... 

[00:55]   

Yeah, I’d go further.  I would say that if you...  There’s not difference between business value and analytic values.  If your analytic, however good it is, isn’t actually being used, then it has no value. 

[01:05]

That’s right, that’s right.  The ROI on that’s really easy to calculate.  Now, this is not your first show.

[01:11]  

No, I’ve been, I think, to every Predictive Analytics World.  I’ve been coming here a long time. I know Eric and the Rising Media folks well.  And it’s been fun to watch it grow and watch it change from really a very niche kind of show where’s there’s people from financial services and credit cards to one where all sorts of people are here.  It’s great.

[01:31]

Now, your business, tell us a little bit about what it is that you guys do.

[01:34] 

So, Decision Management Solutions focuses on companies that are really trying to automate decision-making.  So, there’s some high-volume transaction where it’s not obvious what to do. So, you have to decide what to do for each transaction.  And, obviously, that’s driving a lot of analytics. A lot of people what they want to do is they want to use machine learning, analytics, AI to make a better decision about these transactions, but they’re high enough volume that you can’t just show stuff to people and hope the people can handle the transaction, you got to automate it.  So we help build those automated systems, into which you can embed these kinds of analytic models.   

[02:08]

Do you have like a favorite project or ideal customer-type?

[02:12]

Uh, my favorite project probably is around like “next best offer, next best action” kinds of things.  If you’re a multi-line company, you’ve got lots of different products or your products have complex eligibility like insurance products, then it’s easy to say, “Oh, you should make the next best offer to this customer this moment in the customer journey.”  But actually, figuring out what that offer is – given what they already own, what they’re allowed to buy, which products go with which other products, what the rules are – is a non-trivial problem for most companies. And those systems tend to be more fun ‘cause they’re not as heavily regulated as some other decisions.  So you don’t have to worry about the law quite as much as you do; you have to worry a little but not a lot. The key concern is privacy but the kinds of systems we build don’t need to who you are, they just need to know things about you.  

[02:57]    

So, you’re not dealing with PII,

Welcome to the 2019 Predictive Analytics World (PAW) Conference Series. Recorded live in Las Vegas, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Gerhard Pilcher, CEO of Elder Research.

Find Gerhard Online:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn

Elder Research

[00:02]

I’ve been working with data in the technology field, but in a weird...  I have a really weird... I have a really crazy career path. 

[00:11]  

All right.  Let’s hear it.

[00:12]  

Before I went to technology, I was CTO for a telecom firm, inventing the new DSL subscriber line (high-speed over copper).

[00:20]  

What year is this?

[00:21]  

This was in the years from about ’90 to about ’99.

[00:26]

So early 90s, all the 90s.

[00:28]

All the 90s.

[00:28]   

That was a crazy time, right?

[00:29]

It was a crazy time, and things were booming.  It was insane. Well, then had a tragedy sort of happen in my family and realized I wasn’t spending time with my young sons and wife; so, I bought a road construction company.     

[00:42]  

Was that better?  I don’t know.

[00:45]

I don’t know.  It was crazy. It was like being a farmer.  You know you’re dependent upon weather and uh...  But the interesting thing is technology was just starting to come into the road construction business.  So it was fun. I got to do some things like do oil sampling in predictive maintenance on our large equipment, which allowed us to avoid downtime and more costly repairs.  I got to bring in GPS grading. And, instead of having people out there pulling strings with wooden stakes and doing traditional surveying, the operators had computers in their equipment, and they could see where the road grade needed to be.  And people don’t realize how much goes into actually building a road and compacting it and getting it ready for pavement. And so, that was a lot of fun. And I ended up we were cutting roads at a higher quality than the state was able to measure that quality; and ended up getting invited to Washington, D.C., to talk about grading and that kind of thing and how they could bring their quality processes along because they were actually taking quality out of the roadways.  So a little bit crazy career there.  

And then I decided at a late age that I’m going to go back to grad school and study more about this statistics and analytics stuff.  And so, my son was just going to be a freshman at NC State and was looking for a place to live. And I made this decision with my wife, but he wasn’t quite aware of what was going on.  And so, I called him one day; I said, “You know you’re having trouble finding a place to live. I’ve got the perfect place for you. It’s an older roommate, probably can cook and clean a little bit for you, but it seems like a decent guy you know.  What do you think?” He said, “Well, give me his number. I’ll call him and check him out.” So I started rattling off my phone number, and he goes, “Wait a minute. That’s your phone number.” “Oh, yeah, that’s my phone number.”  

[02:27]

That’s a crazy story.

[02:29]

“What do you think about spending a freshman year of school with your dad?”      

[02:34]

I don’t know if I’d like that very much, but it’s funny, as a dad, I’d love that.  So, fast forward where we are now, there’s been so much evolution inside of our space.  What do you see as one of the megatrends that’s going to like the next kind of wave that takes us the next three to four years?  

[02:51]

Gosh, I think the next wave really is about calming down from some of the hype of data science and realizing how valuable it is but realizing that I have to have a foundation to really accelerate data science through my organization.  So I think people are starting to think more about their data strategy and how do I treat data more like I treat ...

Welcome to the 2019 Predictive Analytics World (PAW) Conference Series. Recorded live in Las Vegas, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Brian Shindurling, VP of Marketing at Big Squid.

Find Brain Online:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn

Big Squid

[00:02]

Hi, I’m Jamin, and you are listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast.  We are live at Predictive Analytics World, Marketing Analytics World, and many other worlds.  My guest right now is Brian, VP of Marketing at Big Squid. You guys have the coolest booth, I think, on the show floor by the way.   

[00:20]  

Oh, thank you.

[00:20]  

The hot pink's great.  I have a kick-ass sticker that I’ve added to my bag.  Thanks very much for the tchotchke stuff.

[00:26]  

Absolutely.

[00:27]  

Tell me a little bit about the company.

[00:29]

Cool, so, we’re Big Squid.  We’re based in Salt Lake City, Utah.  We’ve been around for ten years actually.  The company’s kind of evolved out the marketing and analytics world.  We’ve done a lot of business intelligence consulting in our years past.  And, really, kind of the genesis of where we are today was we were consistently hearing a lot of the same challenges with our customers where leveraging business intelligence for an analytics environment, you’re building really interesting and cool dashboards all the time, but you’re always looking at data in a historical context, which led our customers to the next questions, which is “What’s going to happen?  “Why is it happening?” and “What can I do about it?”     

[01:07]

I mean that’s the Holy Grail.

[01:09]   

Absolutely.  That’s right.  So, a couple of years ago, we launched our product we call Kracken.  It’s an automated machine-learning platform.    

[01:16]

Bad-ass name.

[01:17]  

Thank you, thank you.  And the approach that we’ve taken is to integrate with the analytics infrastructure that BI analysts are using every day.  So, most of your enterprise data warehouses that are on the market today, most of the major business intelligence platforms...  We’re able to round-trip data in and out of those environments where we’re basically just enhancing it with predictive metrics to give analysts a little bit better idea of what’s going to happen.  

[01:39]

That’s really cool.  What kind of data are you dealing with?  

[01:42] 

It depends.  We deal with all kinds of different data.  We’re kind of a horizontal play. We work with companies across basically any vertical that you can think of.  The data that we play with is always structured, again coming out of kind of that business intelligence environment.  

[01:57]

So it’s been cleaned.

[01:58]

It’s been pretty well curated, pretty well cleaned.  This is data that has been used or is being used for reporting on a day-to-day basis.  So we’re lucky in that sense; there’s already been some thought behind the business questions that we’re trying to support with analytics.  Yeah, structured data and set up in a way that it’s being used in reporting environments.   

[02:18]    

Who is an ideal customer?

[02:20]

Good question.  So, our ideal customer is the BI-analyst or data engineer, those that are leveraging these platforms like a Snowflake and/or a Tableau, Looker, Click (Places where they’re leveraging data on a day-to-day basis to derive insights and then reporting on and telling stories to their executive stakeholders about what’s happening in the business and what do we think is going to happen, how should we be thinking about making things better.  But they haven’t really been classically trained on data science and machine learning in the past. So what we’ve done is we’ve created a platform that enables them to very easily navigate towards that concept that Gartner calls a “citizen data scientist.” So,

Welcome to the 2019 Predictive Analytics World (PAW) Conference Series. Recorded live in Las Vegas, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Bob Selfridge, CEO and CTO of TMMData.

Find Bob Online:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn

TTMData

[00:02]

Hi, you’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast.  I’m Jamin, your host. Today I’ve got Bob with TMM Data. We are live at Predictive Analytics World, Marketing Analytics World, Health Care.

[00:16]  

There’s a giant list…

[00:17]  

There’s a giant list.

[0:18]  

of events.  Email is in there somewhere.  Deep Analytics, there’s lots of good stuff here. 

[00:23]  

The email one to me is kind of interesting.  I’m like, "Gosh, email’s dying." 

[00:28]

You think?  You think so?

[00:30]

Yeah, open rates are decreasing.  There’s actually divisions of companies now that aren’t even responding to emails.  They only use Slack and other...anyway. So, Bob, thanks for being on the show.   

[00:42]   

Thank you for having me.  I appreciate it.

[00:44]

Let’s start out.  Talk a little bit about TMM Data.  What do you guys do

[00:48]  

Sure.  We’re about a 13-year-old company.  I started it back in 2008 on my front porch, closed in the building, brought people in:  one of those good, old-fashioned, kind of bootstrap things. We really started TMM was originally Track My Marketing.  So we were all about channel marketing and, ah... Well, at that point, it was multi-channel; now it’s omni-channel ‘cause we have to have cool new words.  But being able to set this up so that you could do reporting.  

[01:14]

That was like early pre-social media focus market too.

[01:18]

Right, right.  2008: I mean it was around, but nobody was really diving in.  It was more of a fun thing to have that us old folks were starting to play with more so than day-to-day operational thing that it is now.  But we started measuring that around 2012. My phrase is, as I like to say, “It’s about the data dummy, not about specifically marketing data or analytics.”  And we really refocused the company to becoming a data-integration company. We saw, while campaign management and marketing analytics is still very the core of what we do, we find that a lot of folks are still struggling with simple things.   They’ve got spreadsheets coming in email; they’ve got, of course, 7,000 marketing technologies out there, floating out there in the atmosphere that they need to pull that data in and merge it and meld it and marry it and all the cool phrases we use now.  So, our goal is to make it easier for analysts, whether they be predictive analysts, marketing analysts, financial analysts, just analysts that are fighting. We just did a survey with Digital Analytics Association here last year. People are spending 40% to 60% of their day just copying and pasting, cleaning data to start doing their work.  And our ultimate mission at the company, our official mission statement is “Meet data needs painlessly,” very short and sweet.   

[02:32]

Oh, I love that.

[02:33]

But we want to be able to allow analysts to come in at 8 in the morning and start doing their job instead of spending four to six hours cleaning up the data to then move to the next step to start doing their job.  So, that’s kind of ultimately our goal in life.

[02:47]

An ROI on that is really easy to get to.  That’s the nice part.

[02:50]

Well, it is.  Unfortunately, for us and unfortunately for some of the analysts, the really good analysts, end up doing the extra work and working into the wee hours.  And the senior management still get all their reports because they just put in extra hours. So the ROI to the individuals on the ground, certainly the feet on the ground really know that there’s a great ROI to it ‘cause it saves them a...

Welcome to the 2019 Predictive Analytics World (PAW) Conference Series. Recorded live in Las Vegas, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Allison Swihart, CEO and Co-founder of Syndetic.

Find Allison Online:

Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn

Syndetic

[00:02]

Hi, everyone.  I’m Jamin Brazil, and you’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast.  We are live today at Predictive Analytics World. I am standing with Allison, the CEO of an up and coming company Syndetic.  You can find information on them at Syndetic.co. Allison, thanks for being on the Happy Market Research Podcast.

[00:24]  

Thanks for having me.

[00:26]  

Well, let’s start with what do you think?  I mean this is Day 2 or 3.

[00:31]  

Day 2.

[00:32]  

Day 2 of the event.  What do you think about the event so far?

[00:34]

I think it’s been wonderful.  It feels like there’s a really good energy here compared to some of the other conferences that I’ve been to recently.  The audience is slightly more technical, which is great for us. And I am getting a lot of good feedback on the talks. And I think that the decision to kind of combine the different PAWs together into one Mega PAW.   

[01:01]

Eight PAWs

[01:01]   

Were there eight?  There have to four PAWs.  What kind of animal is an eight-pawed animal?  I mean... There should be four PAWs. Anyway, yeah, I think it was a good decision because everyone who came for the marketing side versus the kind of deep machine learning side is mingling together, and you’re getting lots of great conversation.    

[01:28]

It is actually interesting seeing that convergence of...  One of the terms that a previous CEO I had on the podcast said is “diversified data” or “data diversification,” meaning...  You see this in executive teams. So executive teams that have diverse gender, ethnicity, whatever, they outperform non-diverse groups.  It was interesting having him creating that connection with respect to different data. And I hadn’t actually thought of it in the way that you just articulated it, but that’s actually pretty relevant also where you’ve got broad disciplines that are now being combined into a single event, which is kind of cool.

[02:15] 

Yeah, yeah.  And having people of different titles and at different levels in the organizations, I think, is really important for conferences.  I know there’s a lot of summits where people kind of focus on just the CIO level, but I think at this event, in particular, we’ve talked to a bunch of people who are analysts, who are doing the actual work, which is really important to bring their perspective of the individual contributor, not just the manager.  The manager might be making the decision to purchase one piece of software over another, but you need the perspective of the kind of “boots-on-the-ground” in order to, I think, make the best decision. So, I think they’ve done really well.     

[02:56]

So, you have a relatively new company.

[02:58] 

Brand-new.  We just launched this year.

[3:00]

Congratulations.  What month?

[03:02]

March.

[03:03]    

Awesome.  So literally brand new.

[03:05]

Literally brand new.

[03:06]

Tell us what your company does.

[03:07]  

So, we are a virtual data warehouse, which means that we allow you to leave all of the data where it lives:  in databases, spreadsheets, third-part services that you access via API, cloud-hosted services like say you use SalesForce.  You have an HR system; you have an accounting system plus you have a non-premise Oracle database. Leave all that data where it is; we virtualize it into a data warehouse as if it were in the same physical location.  So you can query against it, using plain SQL, and define the right slice of data for every project you want to do,

My guest today is Menaka Gopinath, President of Ipsos Social Media Exchange North America. Founded in 1975, Ipsos is one of the largest global market research and a consulting firm with worldwide headquarters in Paris, France. Menaka has held senior positions at Fuel Cycle and  was a Creator and Producer at Wilcox Sessions which was an online video series where musicians played an intimate performance in their living room. 

Find Menaka Online:

LinkedIn

Website: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us

Find Us Online: 

Social Media: @happymrxp

LinkedIn

This Episode's Sponsor:

This episode is brought to you by Clearworks. Clearworks is an insights, innovation, and customer-experience company. They help clients understand their customers better, identify opportunities for innovation, and create products, services, and experiences that matter. Their clients are diverse in size and industry but share one important thing: a passion to drive more business by driving more meaningful human connection. For more information, please visit them at www.clearworks.net.

[00:00]

On Episode 2022, I’m interviewing Menaka, the President of Ipsos Social Media Exchange – North America, but first a word from our sponsor.

[00:11]

This episode is brought to you by Clearworks.  So, we have a couple of sponsors on our show. I just want to underscore how much I appreciate those of you who have sponsored the Happy Market Research Podcast.  It makes a ton of value to the ecosystem that is actually transcending market research right now. I say “transcending”; that’s probably the wrong framework, but exceeding, moving beyond into user experience research as well as data analytics and insights.  In fact, recently we’ve been picking up shows like “Predictive Analytics World” and “Marketing Insights World.” These are two different shows that are great examples of where the Happy Market Research has a presence and, subsequently, an audience that is well outside of the normal market research vein.  So, Clearworks, thank you so much for your sponsorship. For those of you who don’t know, they are insights and innovation and customer experience company. They help their clients understand their customers better, identify opportunities for innovation, and create products, services, and experience that actually matter.  Their clients are diverse, both in size and industry, probably like all of ours, but they do share one important thing, which is a passion to drive more business by driving more meaningful human connections. You can find them online at www.clearworks.net.  Again, it’s www.clearworks.net.  And again, thank you so much for your time.   

[01:43]    

Hi, I’m Jamin Brazil, and you’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast.  My guest today is Menaka Gopinath, President at Ipsos Social Media Exchange – North America.  Founded in 1975, Ipsos is one of the largest market research firms globally and is also a consulting firm with worldwide headquarters in Paris, France.  Menaka has held senior positions at FuelCycle and was a creator and producer at Wilcox Sessions. This is an interesting, little side hustle she’s got going on.  I might wind up cutting that piece. I know you talked to me about it. I actually found it really interesting, but we’ll see. Menaka, thanks so much for joining me on the Happy Market Research Podcast today.

[02:26]

Thanks for having me.  I’m glad to be here.  

[02:29]

Let’s start out with a little bit of context.  Tell us about your early years and how you wound up in market research.

[02:33]

Sure.  Well, I never really thought I’d end up in market research; so, that was a surprise.  But I have always been in the space of connecting with consumers. So when I first entered the work force out of college, I was working in the original startup boom at the end of the 90s.  And I was working at a company that was creating online communities,

Welcome to the 2019 NEXT Conference Series. Recorded live in Chicago, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Zoë Dowling, SVP of Research at FocusVision.

Find Zoë Online:

LinkedIn

Website: https://www.focusvision.com

[00:02]

I’m Jamin Brazil, and you’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast.  We are live today at the NEXT Conference in Chicago. I have the wonderful Zoё with Focus Vision.  Zoё, how are you?   

[00:16]    

I’m great, thank you.  How are you doing?  

[00:17]

I’m good.  When did you get in?

[00:19]

Late last night, later last night.    

[00:22]

Oh, OK.  Kind of late.

[00:23] 

Kind of late.

[00:24]

Kind of late.  So, have you been to the NEXT Conference before?

[00:27] 

Do you know I have not.  And I’m actually really excited to...  It feels like the agenda is a little bit different.  There’s a lot more focus on nuts and bolts. I’m speaking here with Ted Saunders and Roddy Knowles on Mobilize Me, which is research on research.  You don’t see that at conferences these days. Why not? This is important. And so, real excited because there’s other presentations like that as well.    

[00:52]  

Yeah, totally.  You know it’s funny there’s an adjacent industry which is analyzing credit card transactions.  It’s a big, big, big space predominantly sold actually, sold into venture and PE and Wall Street firms so they can analyze like when there’s an issue with Chipotle, what its actual credit card transactions trending towards exactly.  What they’re doing is they release a bunch of research on research. And they’re constantly being quoted in Wall Street Journal, etc. It just truly amazes me that we, as researchers who have billions of transactions (not monetary), we don’t do a better job talking about that kind of stuff.    

[01:39]

Do you know from my perspective I think there’s been a trend away from that?  If you think five years ago, certainly ten years ago (of course, that puts us in the aging category) but this was all about web surveys, web data collection, mobile data collection, but also on the qualitative side, how do we create good engagement with online research community participants, and you just don’t see that now.  And, tell you what: we’ve not cracked the nut. It’s not a done deal.   

[02:07]

Not by a long shot.

[02:07]

We’re not doing amazing research, that kind of research on research.  But you’re right: there’s also a lot that we could dig in on the Big Data side.  Like what time of day? Thinking online communities, what time of day are people coming?  What’s the average? How do we aggregate that across projects? How do we then increase engagements?  How could we do some incentives? I think there’s a lot of different things we could do there to just make us better informed.  

[02:29]

Yeah, even something as basic as email-open rates over time.  I think with such an important topic... Rogier Verhulst with LinkedIn, he had mentioned that they’ve actually seen almost a complete decline, approaching a zero, with certain segments in the population just not accessing email anymore.  They’re utilizing a bunch of different tools to communicate. Before you and I because of my age...

[03:02]

That was tactful.

[03:03]

…I mean pre-social media, there wasn’t an alternative to...   You have like AIM or whatever (AOL kind of online messenger), but it wasn’t at scale.  And now, all of a sudden, there’s probably... I mean I could connect with you at least five different ways, not using email. 

[03:18]

And there’s different ways to get our attention.  And I think that’s interesting because if I think of both SMS but also think of push notifications ‘cause again thinking of them is a way to contact people that we are speaking to their participants.

Welcome to the 2019 NEXT Conference Series. Recorded live in Chicago, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Thomas Fandrich, managing director US and co-founder of quantilope; and Mike Degagne, head of sales at quantilope.

Find Thomas Online:

LinkedIn

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

Find Mike Online:

Linkedin

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

[00:02]

You’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast; I’m Jamin.  And we have today some special guests. We are live at the NEXT Conference here in what is turning out to be a spectacular day outside although we are quarantined, I guess, in Chicago.  I’ve got Thomas and Mike with Quantilope. Guys, welcome.  

[00:22] – Tom     

Hi, Jamin.  Thanks for having us here.  Great to meet you.

[00:25]

It’s great to have you.  For just voice recognition, that is Tom.  

[00:29]

Hey, this is Mike from Quantilope.  

[00:33]

Yeah, you’re going to have to let him in.  

[00:43] - Tom   

We also have a lot of laughing.  So, now we can go to the serious part.  

[00:45]

I’m glad I called you here today.  Tell me what do you guys think about the show so far.

[00:50] – Tom      

Oh, we really like it since there are a lot of specialists here that have very serious knowledge about the industry and about market research.  It was great to get their perspective on a solution like ours, which is pretty much positioned on speed and substance, substance in terms of quantitative methods that go beyond simple service stuff.

[01:14]

Favorite session?  Have you guys been able to attend any sessions?  Mike, we’ll go with you on this one.

[01:20] – Mike

I have not; so, you should not go with me. 

[01:24] 

Tom, have you attended any?

[01:26] – Tom

Me neither, so ah...

[01:26]

It’s hard when you’re exhibiting to go to the sessions ‘cause you feel like that’s the moment the big customer...  You know Coke is going to walk by your booth as soon as I go here. The head of insights for CES. It’s this whole like FOMO, fear of missing out thing that happens.  I’m suffering from it from it too, which is killing me, because I really wanted to hear the storytelling session, but anyway... That didn’t happen, and I also didn’t get Coke.  So, waah. Anyway.   

All right, so, tell me exactly what you guys do.

[01:59] - Tom 

All right, so Quantilope is an Agile Insights platform, right, that automizes all the single steps in a market research project, which is kind of finding the right tool to tackle your research question, program the questionnaire, and infuse it with high-end methodologies like System 1 Conjoint, MaxDiff, then field it to get the data in real time and get it visualized and analyzed in real time through our analyze module, and build beautiful dashboards of all that stuff to share it internally and externally.  So it covers the entire process very seamless and automized.  

[02:35]  

Mike, you gave me a demo, didn’t you?  

[02:37] – Mike

I did not, but one of my guys did.  

[02:40]  

One of your guys did.  Yeah, right, exactly. So, one of things that I thought was super interesting about the fundamentals of the platform is that I can execute in MaxDiff really, really easily.  So, I have my survey that is built out; that’s straightforward. Not really a big USB. But now, all of a sudden, I just add my attributes and it makes a recommendation on what types of statistical approaches I may want to use, incorporate into my survey design in order to answer my questions.  And then I also really like the reporting side of it (not that I’m trying to sell for you guys). But I personally was really impressed ‘cause it was all streamlined and easy to use. Tell me about some of the more popular applications.

[03:33] – Mike

So, ah,

Welcome to the 2019 NEXT Conference Series. Recorded live in Chicago, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Simon Chadwick, managing partner of Cambiar LLC.

Find Simon Online:

LinkedIn

Website: https://www.consultcambiar.com

[00:02]

I have Simon Chadwick, the legend, here live at the NEXT Conference here in Chicago.  Simon, how are you?

[00:11]    

I’m good, thanks, Jamin.  How are you doing?

[00:12]

I’m doing OK.  Thank you for asking.  The weather has been a little bit cold, but not too bad.  A little rainy, oddly enough for Chicago this time of year.  But what are you going to do? We’re in a conference anyway so...    

[00:25]

It’s not snowing.

[00:25]

Not snowing, not freezing.  Totally wins, yeah, totally wins.  Actually, it might even be warm for Chicago standards.  I don’t know.

[00:32]   

I don’t know.  All I think is that when it rains in Chicago, it’s just because the temperature is turning the snow into liquid.  

[00:41]

Exactly!  Totally true.  It’s a very cold city.

[00:43]      

Anyway, I love this city

[00:45]

I do, too.  It’s actually my favorite city globally, but it would be hard for me to move here just because of the winters.  But I absolutely love Chicago. The people are super nice. It feels like a New York, you know like a Manhattan, London-ish type. 

[00:59]

And great architecture and, you know, the rivers, and...  yeah, tremendous, yeah.

[01:05] 

It is great.  So, what do you think about the conference so far?

[01:08]

Well, from what I’ve seen so far, not bad at all.  I’m really looking forward to my colleague Lucy’s paper later this afternoon, which is “Who Killed Advertising Effectiveness?”  Murder at the manor. It’s a detective story, interactive.  

[01:30]

Of course, Lucy would bring just riveting bend to that subject.    

[01:36]

Right, right.

[01:37]  

Or any subject.

[01:38]  

Yeah, she’s a great speaker.  So I’m looking forward to that.  Looking forward to the comedy show tonight.  Are you going?

[01:44]

Yeah, I am, I am.  

[01:44]  

That should be fun.  

[01:45]

That’s going to be great.  

[01:46]

Unfortunately, I don’t know about you, but every time I come to a conference, conference calls with China or with India crop up, and you’re in your room, you know, yeah.

[02:01]   

Totally.  It’s ridiculous; it’s absolutely asinine, very frustrating, actually.  That just happened to me today, actually. And I missed an important person I was trying to connect with.  Anyway, that’s disappointing when that happens. So, the show’s actually really good. I’ve enjoyed... I’ve been able to attend three sessions or speakers, whatever.  They were super informative. I’ve been impressed with the quality of the content.   

[02:30]

Yeah, I was at the storytelling one, and I thought that she did a good job:  actually, made it easier for people to understand what they had to do in preparation and how to actually keep this story alive after the presentation.  It was very pragmatic and practical.

[02:53]  

Yeah, I love the tactical application.  I’m a sucker for, if you put up a blog post and say, “Three Tips to...”, then I’m like, “OK,” because I'm going to read it.  I like the... I can pull something out of this and apply it today to my life and have an impact.

[03:09]

You know, we as humans are so funny whenever we see numbers.  Talking about Lucy, again, she did a big experiment at Coca-Cola Western Europe, which she presented at ESOMAR, looking at how you can disseminate insights to people who actually were not the stakeholders.  So, if you’re Coke sodas and you find something, how can you get to cross to the juices or waters because it might actually be really relevant to them. So they conducted a big experiment.

Welcome to the 2019 NEXT Conference Series. Recorded live in Chicago, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Ray Fischer, CEO and Founding Partner of Aha! Online Research.

Find Ray Online:

LinkedIn

Website: https://ahaonlineresearch.com

[00:00]

Aha! is the name of the company.  We are live at the Insights Association’s NEXT Conference 2019 in Chicago.  We are winding up Day 2. What time do you take off

[00:15]    

I take off just after this interview.  I’m going to head down to the train station, do the old school Amtrak back to Detroit.  It’s going to be awesome.

[00:21]

Oh, that’s right.  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.  

[00:22]

Yeah, yeah.  I take the train, get some work done, get to watch a little "Billions" on the way back.

[00:25]

How long does that take?

[00:27] 

It’s about four and a half hours.

[00:28]

OK.  That’s not bad.

[00:29]      

I lose an hour going back.  I go from the Central to the East time zone.  It’s a little bit longer that way, but it’s a nice, comfortable, great way to go back, you know, Detroit to Chicago.     

[00:38]

Totally.  You don’t have like all the drama with air flight.  

[00:40]

It is so simple.  It’s incredible. I mean they don’t even check ID’s going on, which is weird to me, but...

[00:45] 

I know.  It is old school.

[00:47]

It’s that simple.  It’s old school. It feels like a throw-back, 45, 50 years ago.  

[00:51]

Yeah, it does, it does.  I remember the old days of air traffic prior to 9/11.  It’s like show up. Anybody who’s at the gate...

[01:00]

Right, the train is kind of like that now, but I will tell you they haven’t changed the cars in 45 or 50 years.  A little dated, but it is kind of a cool, romantic sort of way to travel back and forth, when it’s not too far.

[01:14] 

Is it packed?

[01:14]  

It is usually pretty full, you know, because there’s a lot of, again, Detroiters coming to Chicago and back and forth, a lot of transplants both ways. 

[01:22]

Yep, totally.  So a highlight of the show?

[00:25]  

Highlight of the show.  I saw a couple of really good talks.  I’d say the first highlight though... When I go to these shows, they become so fun.  When I look back five or six years ago when we were just launching, I didn’t know anybody at the shows.  So, it was basically me and my two partners, standing at our booth talking to each other, telling stories, trying to make it look like we’re having fruitful conversations at selling something.  Now, I can go to the shows (we didn’t exhibit at this one), I’m just walking around; I see people like you; I see people like a lot of friends, vendors, prospects, clients, etc. I make new friends.  It’s just a really, really fun way to immerse yourself more in the industry but, again, as time goes on, it just becomes kind of a community of friends.      

[02:06]

ROI on shows.  That’s interesting, right?  I think about that a lot. Like how do I maximize my return on... It’s expensive:  it’s $10,000; by the time you’re done, it’s $10,000. You’ve got a couple staff, and that doesn’t include the hard costs of time and money going into it.       

[02:24]

No doubt, no doubt.  

[02:25]   

So, what do you think about that?  Do you guys do much exhibiting?  

[02:29]

You know, we do.  We do about four conferences a year where we exhibit and I speak at several as well.  So those definitely help ‘cause when you have the exhibit and the speaking engagement, as you know, that’s kind of a double whammy, double power-packed punch.  You know where you got the ability to talk to people who come by your booth after they saw it. So you really max out, especially if you get an earlier time slot.  If you’re the last guy on the last day, you don’t really get to maximize that.