00;00;03;00 - 00;00;18;25
VO
Welcome to Dig In, the podcast brought to you by Dig Insights. Each week Jess Gaedeke chats with world class brand professionals to bring you the story behind the story of some of the most breakthrough innovations, marketing tactics, and campaigns.

00;00;18;28 - 00;00;41;09
Jess
Hi everybody. Welcome to Dig In. We've got a special episode today as we wrap up season two of the podcast. We recently sat down with Risa Duesing, Global Head of Consumer Insights at Kraft Heinz. She's a longtime friend and partner of Dig’s, and this discussion was recorded at Greenbook’s IIEX event in Austin, where we did a live podcast with Risa.

00;00;41;11 - 00;01;07;08
Jess
It was about the evolving dynamics of qualitative research space, where technology and talent are really disrupting a long tenured research practice. So some of the things you'll hear about include the research questions where qual is a must have, especially for Kraft Heinz. The tangible value that AI will deliver, along with some important watch outs, and how qualitative research can help an entire client organization stay close to the consumer.

00;01;07;10 - 00;01;20;21
Jess
I love this chat because it captures authentic perspectives from these experts. It includes real world applications that I think will inspire the brand leaders listening today. So enjoy and we'll be back with season three after a summer break.

00;01;20;24 - 00;01;49;23
Frank
Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining me today, my name is Frank Serpico. I'm an Executive Vice President at Dig Insights. And so what that means for me is I lead a team of exceptional strategists and researchers who are on our qualitative and our quantitative insight function. And so I'm responsible for the quality of the work that we deliver to our clients, the financial health business as well as the development of the people on my team.

00;01;49;26 - 00;01;59;19
Frank
So and today I'm joined by Risa Duesing as well as Patricia King. And we'd love each of you to take a moment and introduce yourself and tell me a little bit about some of your passion.

00;01;59;22 - 00;02;22;12
Risa
Sure, hi. I'm Risa Duesing. I lead global consumer insights and marketing analytics at Kraft Heinz. Passion is part of why I do what I do is the consumer. It's people. It's understanding people. Love that. I'm definitely in the right job. Definitely excited to talk about this more today.

00;02;22;14 - 00;02;27;18
Patricia
And I’m Patricia King. I’m the EVP of qualitative research at Dig Insights.

00;02;27;21 - 00;02;45;20
Patricia
I lead a team of five different qualitative VPs with full team and under them, which is great. and I don't think you told us you were going to ask this passion question. I could have given you some other icebreaker questions if you had, you know, asked me. Real life passion.

00;02;45;22 - 00;02;58;04
Patricia
I love food. I'm a very big foodie. I love to understand food. You know? Know all about it. And I would say that, you know, the fact that I get so involved in things is why I'm in qualitative research.

00;02;58;06 - 00;02;59;01
Frank
Love it.

00;02;59;03 - 00;03;07;11
Patricia
I just I need to go past. I need to know more. I need to dig in. I always ask more questions, which I guess is how I got into moderating.

00;03;07;13 - 00;03;26;28
Frank
Yeah. Scratch that itch. Yeah, love it. Thank you both for joining the discussion today. Today we're going to be talking about cutting through the noise and really hearing consumers in 2024. And to unpack that a little bit I think, you know, there's so qualitative research has always been the sort of cornerstone of what to dig in.

00;03;26;28 - 00;03;45;07
Frank
You want to really explore with consumers. You want to understand their motivations and emotions. It's always been that it will always be that. But it also not too long ago, used to be the sort of scrappy option where you want to just get a quick pulse on consumers. You wanted to understand, you know, a quick evaluation of something.

00;03;45;07 - 00;04;09;11
Frank
You could get in and out in a very effective, efficient way and hear what consumers were thinking about your product. And with the rise of, you know, tech enabled solutions and agile research, you know, that pendulum has swung to quantitative to a degree, right? Now, quantitative is the quantitative is the agile solution. It's it's it's quantifiable. It's cost effective.

00;04;09;14 - 00;04;29;05
Frank
You can get a constant stream of information, a constant pulse of information. And so today I'd love to talk about well, what does that mean for the role of qual today. And how do we leverage it and lean into it. So let's start with what has changed in qual. How have you seen,Patricia, the role of qual change in like the last ten years?

00;04;29;05 - 00;04;40;13
Frank
What are the things that excite you? What are the things that make you worried, nervous? And let's hold off on the AI conversation for the moment, because that's a huge thing that we'll have a separate conversation about.

00;04;40;16 - 00;05;00;09
Patricia
Yeah. well, when you say the last ten years, I think going back to almost 20, which kind of tells my age a little bit, but, you know, I really think, like when I think of qual, I think of it in almost four time periods. There was original, traditional in-person focus groups, in-person ideas. And that's kind of what qual was then.

00;05;00;09 - 00;05;21;06
Patricia
You know, you have the rise of, you know, recollective, eye track. So it was kind of the OG discussion boards, bulletin boards. You know, we talked to people in text, use some pictures. Then Covid hit and, and pre Covid with clients were like, hey, can we do an online folks group. I'm like no. Like customers are bad talking to each other online.

00;05;21;06 - 00;05;41;17
Patricia
Like it's we have the technology but the people are not there. It's so awkward and so painful. Like so do we need one on one or do we need an in-person focus group? But over Covid, that all changed. Vendors stepped up, the platforms got so good. But in addition to that, people changed. We got better at talking to people online.

00;05;41;18 - 00;06;06;07
Patricia
We got better at cutting people off, jumping in. There's no more dead sound. So I feel like there was Covid and now there's post Covid where, you know, to your point, we have faster, we have quicker, we have AI. So now we're in a whole new world where we're going past the Covid of a better platform and just being able to find people quicker, do it faster and do it at a larger scale.

00;06;06;11 - 00;06;11;23
Patricia
So I think we're in another pivoting like moment. Right.

00;06;11;26 - 00;06;28;12
Risa
Yeah. No I, I agree with all that. And actually as you're speaking I was thinking about this when I oftentimes not so much anymore. But oftentimes when I talk about what I do for a living, I can go into whatever level of detail and the person I'm talking to if they're not in the industry will say, oh, so you do focus groups.

00;06;28;15 - 00;06;29;00
Frank
Right?

00;06;29;03 - 00;06;59;20
Risa
Oh, no, that's just a small piece. and my mother included and, so but focus groups, as you talk about the different kind of layers and time layers, I'd say focus groups were the thing, right? A long time ago. they still have a role. They still play a role. Because when I think about qualitative today, when you have stim that you need people to react to, when you need the in context read, that is the time for like focus groups, walking with consumers to restore doing ethnographies.

00;06;59;23 - 00;07;29;29
Risa
But to your point, it's become much more accessible, because of the online aspect. And I totally agree. Before Covid, I would have said, oh my God, why would we do that online? You can do it so much better in person. But with all the new tools and the new ways of thinking, it's been fantastic. And I'll say, you know, even so, pre-COVID, even ten years ago, oftentimes, particularly in innovation, as we were launching new items, the thing that was easy to cut out of the timeline, when you need to shorten that timeline

00;07;30;01 - 00;07;50;05
Risa
when you needed to shorten the timeline, the qual is what disappeared because it took time. Because you had to recruit. You had to get to different markets because you couldn't just do it in one market. Right. And now online you can get to different markets very easily. and I can think of a number of situations where that was a terrible move because we cut out, for example, product concept fit.

00;07;50;05 - 00;08;04;04
Risa
Right. So you had a concept that did amazing, you did that quant, and then you needed to do that qualitative where you talk to consumers and expose them. And and it would get cut out. And then you would launch a product and you be like, oh, uh oh. This product is not actually what people said they liked in the concept.

00;08;04;06 - 00;08;17;19
Risa
So point being, I think it's changed a lot over the years and the ability to do it quickly and get broad reach with consumers across the across the globe, honestly, is is amazing and it's changing the landscape.

00;08;17;22 - 00;08;26;29
Patricia
I always say, you know, I can now talk to a single mom in rural Ontario. Yeah. When we did in person, we did not talk to a single mom in rural Ontario.

00;08;26;29 - 00;08;44;09
Patricia
I can guarantee you that. We had people in city centers that were free from 5 to 7 and wanted to make some extra money, you know, You hope to represent them when you go, into qual. And then you are able to kind of stretch that and measure it, but you're just getting such a better read now, depending on the situation, of course.

00;08;44;14 - 00;08;44;21
Risa
Yeah.

00;08;44;21 - 00;08;56;14
Frank
So you've touched on online and in-person and sort of the evolution of that, particularly as Covid accelerated that. But where is the right purpose in place for online versus in-person?

00;08;56;16 - 00;09;24;04
Risa
Yeah, yeah, I can start. I'd say again, it's, it's when you need to be live with consumers and oftentimes it's because you need the probing. So the example I give is if we are changing package graphics and we need to be in context at a shelf, right. Like and it can be in store. It can be in a, you know, some version of, in person testing, CLT sort of thing.

00;09;24;07 - 00;09;50;15
Risa
You can if you do it virtually, you can get the immediate reaction. You can do the eye tracking. There's things you can do virtually, but what you can't do is you really can't dig into the whys and you really can't observe in the same way. And I think observations, while there's a lot of bias around observations and so used in the right way, I think is important, but observations in some situation, there's no replacement for it to be able to watch how someone is taking in information and then be able to probe in the right ways.

00;09;50;17 - 00;10;23;26
Risa
And so that's where I think the in-person is incredibly important. And I've been pushing the team to make sure we don't cut it out completely. but and again, you know, virtually, I, I love the virtual aspect of being able to cycle through a lot of things, being able to reach the rural Ontario mom. being able to have actually a representative sample because I think back and I'm like, man, we were making big decisions because we were limited on time and money based on, I'm in Chicago, based on, you know, Chicago people that were available from 12 to 2.

00;10;23;28 - 00;10;33;19
Risa
So I think, yeah, you know, the right, the right time and place is all about what you're trying to accomplish and what's important. And then weighing those pros and cons.

00;10;33;23 - 00;10;36;22
Frank
Yeah.

00;10;36;25 - 00;10;54;08
Patricia
And I kind of want to build on that because we're talking about in-person versus, online. But then there's like traditional versus not traditional. So, you know, you have your focus group, which I consider traditional. and it could be online or in-person. So that to me is a little bit more traditional. And you know, I love focus groups.

00;10;54;08 - 00;11;11;28
Patricia
To your point, there's a time and a place. Brand positioning work. Consumers cannot really understand what a brand positioning statement is. Or you need someone to explain that you need it in context and you need you need group think. You need people to see it, talk about it and push back on each other like Dude, that's stupid. You know what I mean?

00;11;11;28 - 00;11;36;06
Patricia
Like that doesn't work. That's not what you read there. So you kind of want a little bit of that push back when you think about like focus groups, you know, but then I can do right now with like mobile ethnography, shop along safaris, just having people go out into real life and show us, you know, what they're doing at a QSR, what they're eating, who they're with, selfies of them and their kids having a milkshake, and how this is an enjoyable moment.

00;11;36;09 - 00;11;55;08
Patricia
So I feel like that's kind of, you know, so much more in depth than you'd ever get, you know, observing yourself and sitting there and saying, hey, can you go and do a shop along with me or go do a visit at the QSR, you know? but being able to sit there in the QSR, just watch people, you know, there's a time and place for that that, you know, you cannot, you know

00;11;55;08 - 00;12;00;18
Patricia
kind of get through an online approach. So I think it depends on what the question is.

00;12;00;20 - 00;12;16;29
Risa
Yeah actually to build on that like what the question is and and being clear on your, your objectives, right, which is what the question is. And I think oftentimes what happens is we get so wrapped up in there's so many different cool methodologies out there that it's we start with like, I want to use this methodology or I want to do it this way.

00;12;16;29 - 00;12;23;00
Risa
And then we dive right in and we don't take a step back and say like, what are the what are the questions that I'm actually answering? And is this the right thing?

00;12;23;01 - 00;12;24;03
Frank
Yeah, exactly.

00;12;24;05 - 00;12;27;25
Frank
Are there watch outs when it comes to online versus in-person?

00;12;27;25 - 00;12;50;05
Risa
So it's funny. Yeah I was I was somewhat hoping you would ask that because I have a strong opinion on this. I think I think it's easy to over research now that we have this online capability. and I often say like, no research is better than bad research, right. And oftentimes we're working with business partners,

00;12;50;10 - 00;13;06;18
Risa
It's less about my team, actually, and more about the business partners that we're working with where they're like, well, we can just quickly do this thing. And I, you know, I want to understand if people like this new flavor of this thing, go do a quick, quick online call. And like, that's not the way to make a decision and it's not the right use.

00;13;06;18 - 00;13;26;23
Risa
Right. And so I think for me the watch out is sometimes we do research that we probably shouldn't do, because it's so easy and because it's so quick and because it's less expensive than it once was. And so being smart again, back to your point on like the questions, the objective and like, should we actually be doing the research on this or like, do we know enough to move without it.

00;13;29;11 - 00;13;55;28
Frank
So let's talk about the 800 pound gorilla which is AI. AI has impacted all of us, every single person in this room here today in meaningful ways. and I'd love to get both of your perspectives on how you see AI influencing and evolving qual specifically. again, what excites you? What worries you, you know, are the robots taking over or are we going to be fine?

00;13;56;01 - 00;14;01;00
Frank
Patricia, as a practitioner, I want to start with you. What do you, what excites you the most about that?

00;14;01;03 - 00;14;24;12
Patricia
What excites me the most is its speed. its objectivity. it's being able to, you know, a lot of times to the point earlier of qual was long. It was clunky. There was travel. Even today, it's like, okay, we have a two week work group and then we're in field for a week. Maybe we're in field for two weeks, and then we have a 2 or 3 week reporting period.

00;14;24;15 - 00;14;45;16
Patricia
Now, yesterday I had a client say, hey, can I get a top line report tomorrow? And we're like, yeah. And an AI top line report, we're going to put it into our OTAP which is our AI internal software. And we're going to upload it, we're going to give you summaries and we're going to ask a couple questions and the person that moderated these sessions can read it, make sure it's right.

00;14;45;19 - 00;15;07;05
Patricia
Make sure you know it's reading it correctly. And we'll get that over to you. And then we can continue on. and that's exciting. That was before the email that the moderator was writing, trying to remember, but maybe one loud person was standing out, maybe one cute picture was standing out maybe one video was standing out. So now we we can do it quickly and a little more objectively, like there's more productivity.

00;15;07;11 - 00;15;27;20
Patricia
It's great. And I think that, you know, from my perspective my team we're qual We believe in empathy. We want to talk to people. We have a little bit of, attention when it comes to AI. Is it is it getting the whole story? And my answer is always, well, absolutely not. But it's getting you what your analysts would have got.

00;15;27;22 - 00;15;47;01
Patricia
So you're saving those 20 hours, those 30 hours to be able to put that time in, to be more strategic, to understand it, to go back. So personally, I'm super excited about it because I get my clients their work faster, more efficiently, and then we get to do more work.

00;15;47;04 - 00;15;55;23
Frank
Yeah, I've heard you. I've heard you say the phrase before that for you, AI is about augmentation, not automation.

00;15;55;24 - 00;15;56;29
Risa

00;15;56;29 - 00;15;58;20
Frank
Tell me about that.

00;15;58;23 - 00;16;18;08
Patricia
Well, it's funny because, we were actually pitching on a project lately where, a competitor came in a qualitative competitor and said, actually, we don't think qual’s needed. We can use AI and we can get there. And I'm looking at it being like, like, but can you like it's it's a part of the picture. It's not the whole picture.

00;16;18;08 - 00;16;34;24
Patricia
We can't do this without consumers. And to the point of augmentation we will never we don't want to automate our qual. We don't want to automate and just pump something out. We want to be able to look at it, add that emotion, understand what our consumers said, and be able to take that and do it faster and be able to be more strategic.

00;16;34;25 - 00;16;55;00
Patricia
But I don't ever want to automate, you know, and there's the idea of now and, and I think we'll get a bit more into this, like the quick qual, the, the new open ended question of video in, in a survey that's just being summarized in AI. It has its time in its place. I don't think it's going to go to replace qual.

00;16;55;00 - 00;17;03;15
Frank
Yeah. And, Risa, as an end user of receiving that. Like what does AI do for you when it comes to qual today.

00;17;03;17 - 00;17;23;25
Risa
Yeah. It's interesting because I tend to have similar thoughts on and like AI does a really great job of connecting the dots. Maybe even better than the humans would, right. Because to your point, like they're not going to be biased in the same ways that like, no matter what, we can't we're human, we can't hide, you know, we're going to have biases.

00;17;23;28 - 00;17;52;18
Risa
and so one way that's been really helpful for us, but it depends again, on the consumer. It has to start with. It has to start with the consumer feedback. is like social listening. And we'll talk I think a little bit more about that too. With social listening. It's there's a lot of great commentary from consumers online, and I think AI does a fantastic job of connecting those dots and identifying trends and things that are growing better than a human would, honestly.

00;17;52;18 - 00;18;14;00
Risa
And we've used it for, for that method. And I think it's been really successful. But you need those initial the initial comments from consumers to get there, because AI’s not going to get that for you. And an example that I'll use, which you know, just as a consumer, not even in my, you know, in my day job, I'd say companies like Amazon have started using AI through all the comments.

00;18;14;04 - 00;18;30;23
Risa
Right? There's all the consumer, you know, you if maybe you've seen this, if I go online and I'm reading all the reviews and I want to decide what to buy now on Amazon, there's this and a lot of companies started doing this, there's this AI like overview of these are the things people have said that are good, bad, indifferent, that sort of thing.

00;18;30;25 - 00;18;48;10
Risa
which is great as a starting point. But then I still have to read the comments to get to the why, right? What it doesn't get you, it gets you. It gets you that initial analysis. It doesn't get you the depth of like, why did people say it was bad quality? Because guess what? When I start to read it, I'm like, oh, well, I actually don't care about that thing.

00;18;48;12 - 00;19;04;00
Risa
So I’m going to buy it anyway, right? So there is, there is that human overlay that I think is still going to continue to be really important, but we can be really smart about how we connect it all. Yeah. And as humans, we know that the people writing the comments are super pissed when they're doing it. You know what I mean?

00;19;04;00 - 00;19;09;13
Patricia
Like, yeah, I was just going give me like, today was a lovely day and my product was just fine, right?

00;19;09;15 - 00;19;13;20
Risa
Like that's you're getting the lovers and the haters, right? You're getting the positive, the negative,

00;19;13;20 - 00;19;20;17
Patricia
a lot of emotion. I only I only write comments usually when I'm not very happy I don't I don't do a lot of good ones.

00;19;20;17 - 00;19;21;20
Risa
Yeah. Fair.

00;19;21;22 - 00;19;32;14
Frank
Yeah. so Patricia, do you have an example of how you've leveraged AI recently? You talked about the OTAP one with that client who wanted the top line. Do you have another example?

00;19;32;17 - 00;19;50;24
Patricia
Yeah, we're kind of using it for everything now. It's great from, you know, developing a screener, to developing discussion guides like, you know, we have objectives for a client, write a proposal to take that first and say, hey, write us a discussion guide. And it's, you know, again, you're going to you're going to get 40 or 50% of the way there.

00;19;50;24 - 00;20;11;07
Patricia
Then you're going to say shorten it, make it more casual and then you'll finish it yourself. but I think what I really love at Dig right now is we have we again talking about speed. We have a consumer pulse solution where we can recruit overnight. We interview consumers the next day, and then we want to get a report as fast as we can.

00;20;11;09 - 00;20;29;11
Patricia
the guys I say, the guys the data analytics team at Dig has like developed us, I would say our own platform within OTAP. So, you know, we're not just like copying and pasting transcripts from these ten interviews. We're uploading them separately. We're able to identify who's the moderator, who's the speaker. And again, back to that objectivity thing.

00;20;29;15 - 00;20;48;23
Patricia
It knows it's ten different people. So it's not just giving you responses from one person, or just summarizing the whole thing. It's summarizing as ten different people. So we're using that a lot to start to analyze every project. So outside of like all the other day to day things we're using it for, proposals have never been so easy to write. Again,

00;20;48;25 - 00;21;07;08
Patricia
client objective. Can you put this in all the same tense for me? Like I use it at the most basic level. I feel like, you know, the, the data analytics team at Dig right now is listening is being like, oh my God, kill me. but the fact that they've built the tools so that we can analyze what we're doing and feel good about it.

00;21;07;10 - 00;21;11;19
Patricia
So, yeah, we're we're using a kind of at the beginning of every project we do at this point.

00;21;11;25 - 00;21;40;03
Frank
That's great. So the amount and the speed of information that we're getting, consumer feedback is, is is tremendous. Like we're all getting hit. We're all inundated with information, all forms, quantitative, qualitative, big data, scale, shopper data, you name it. Right. It's coming in from all fronts. And so a lot of it is really powerful because on one hand you get a lot of consumer feedback constantly in the moment.

00;21;40;04 - 00;21;59;05
Frank
Right. You're getting a lot of that stuff. But it also there's a lot of noise in that too, right. And so we touched on this a little bit as we were talking earlier. But what are some of the values of some of those more traditional qual approaches versus things like social listening or online community views and consumer feedback loops and things like that?

00;21;59;05 - 00;22;04;11
Frank
So from your perspective, like what do you where do you see the value of like social listening versus the value of traditional qual.

00;22;04;13 - 00;22;25;13
Risa
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. social listening for me, there are major pros and cons. it is, you know, to your point, it's going to be the people that are super happy or super pissed off. And so you have to keep that in mind. I think it's easy to lose sight of that. what it allows though, is, you know, we say to operate at the speed of culture.

00;22;25;15 - 00;22;46;13
Risa
So there are things that we have launched because we started hearing a lot of noise. Right. So, an example, we had a Taylor Swift Seemingly Ranch that you may have seen. And I love that example because it was a product that we already had the capability to make. We just kind of renamed it. Right? So it was like very easy to get out the door.

00;22;46;15 - 00;23;03;25
Risa
We heard all the conversation about Seemingly Ranch tied to Taylor Swift, and we were like, okay, this is something we're going to do. Limited distribution, you know, 1 or 2 retailers, done. And so social listening is that is that research? Not really. Right. But it's it's hearing what consumers are talking about and what's important, speed of culture like right now.

00;23;03;25 - 00;23;20;29
Risa
Right. So that we could act as quickly as possible. Now it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you can't act that quickly. That was a case where we could and and that team did just an amazing job reacting. So I think social listening can be great in that way. It can be a great complement when it comes to more like longer term.

00;23;20;29 - 00;23;39;23
Risa
I talked a little bit about trends and foresight, like how to start to build those ideas. And so we use it a lot for that. It's I think it's a great complement. So we'll use it as a starting point oftentimes and then build on that with traditional research. So hey, there's this trend that's up and coming in a certain space.

00;23;39;25 - 00;24;02;09
Risa
Let's have a conversation with consumers or let's have them video. I love like the iPhone videos, right. Like video of themselves making breakfast so they could tell us about, you know, that breakfast occasion and we can figure out how to bring that trend to reality in terms of what's actually happening and what that action here is. I just I tend to feel like there is never again recognizing the pros and cons.

00;24;02;10 - 00;24;24;10
Risa
There's never a replacement for watching consumers in their natural environment. and, and, you know, observing what they're doing and having them talk about it, obviously with the biases around it. But, but I think from a traditional qualitative perspective, there's always going to be a time and place for shopping with consumers, watching them do things.

00;24;24;10 - 00;24;35;09
Risa
And, you know, even the upload of pictures and videos and talking about that versus, you know, the quick, let's see what consumers are talking about online because there's biases there too.

00;24;35;11 - 00;24;51;25
Frank
From from where you sit. How do you feel about being able to see consumers engage authentically iIn their space. Like do you feel like it's more authentic today or is it just as it always was? There's always some sort of research bias over the whole thing.

00;24;51;28 - 00;25;12;06
Risa
Yeah. I’m mixed on that. It's a really great question. It's it's more authentic in the way that I think consumers forget what they're doing sometimes when you have them videoing with their iPhone, because it's become so normal. when we started doing that pre-COVID, let's call it, I don't know, maybe five years ago, whatever it was, the video was very forced.

00;25;12;06 - 00;25;27;18
Risa
Sometimes we had to send a video camera home with people because they didn’t have an iPhone. Right. it's so normal and part of life that what I find is you have to allow enough time, because when they start, they're very scripted, right? I'm videoing. I'm doing this project, but like, once they get in,

00;25;27;20 - 00;25;28;29
Frank
I’ve prepared what I wanted to say.

00;25;29;02 - 00;25;45;19
Risa
It's awesome. And you, you you get to a place that you don't get to when we're sitting in a focus group or you're doing an in-person ethnography and they've got, you know, someone taking notes in the background and someone, it becomes a little bit forced so I think that's really nice. We did. It's also a more authentic way.

00;25;45;21 - 00;26;05;28
Risa
You know, one example is we try to link the consumer empathy with our leaders, people who are, you know, CFO like, right, like people who are not day to day doing this job. and the, the personal video has allowed for that. And we did something recently at an, a big leadership conference where it wasn't even research per se.

00;26;05;28 - 00;26;30;04
Risa
It was just having consumers talk about their favorite brands with their iPhone across the globe. So we had to translate some of the different languages, right. And and showcasing that to senior leadership. Even though it wasn't research, we weren't necessarily learning anything new. But it was so authentic and how people talked about brands. And there's no, you know, a PowerPoint report is never going to replace seeing that video and the facial expression.

00;26;30;05 - 00;26;44;15
Patricia
I think that overlay at the beginning of every one of my proposals going forward, I'm just just going to use, I'm just going to use your voice beginning of every one of my pitches from now on.

00;26;44;18 - 00;26;46;19
Risa
Feel free. All good.

00;26;46;22 - 00;26;48;11
Frank

00;26;48;21 - 00;27;12;06
Patricia
I was just going to follow up on that talking about how people get more comfortable. I did a study. It was probably 2 or 3 years ago now, but we did a weeklong waste study, and people had to show you pictures of their garbage and tell you what was in it. And the first couple days they were a little bit uptight about their garbage by day five, like what you were seeing and what they were saying, it was just, you know, they're like, I, I need to get this done now.

00;27;12;06 - 00;27;20;14
Patricia
So like, and this is like, and it just gets so real. The more you talk to consumers, it just gets more dirty in that instance.

00;27;20;17 - 00;27;45;05
Frank
It's an excellent point that you both bring up that there's a level today, but there's still this showmanship that happens on the up front. Right. That you got to break through to get to the authentic response. That's great. from your perspective, Patricia, when do you think about when to lean into more traditional qual options versus when to lean into other types of.

00;27;45;08 - 00;28;05;00
Patricia
I think it's well, I think that's always front of mind as soon as we, like, talk to a client and we have a, a business question, we have a decision that gets made. It's what’s the right place for this. But I always think, like, as soon as one of my team members call me and say, hey, we need to do some work on brand position, I'm like, focus groups. Still today.

00;28;05;00 - 00;28;19;24
Patricia
I'm like, they they need the probing. They need the moderation. They need someone to talk them through the fact that this is not what they're going to see on the shelf. This is not going to go on in front of, you know, a bag of chips. This is what like so so you need that. So that's when I'm like.

00;28;19;24 - 00;28;36;20
Patricia
You know, that's that's how you decide that you want to do a focus group. If the question is, you know, what are your your needs states and what are the the areas that you can play in. You can't play in. What's that white space? You know, that might be a mobile ethnography that's, you know, let's let's see you in real life.

00;28;36;20 - 00;28;56;29
Patricia
Let's see what you're doing and why and who you're with. so I think it's really like it. I think it always depends. And often, you know, you may see something and look at and say, actually, you know, we might be able to do that better from quant. I try not to say that all the time, you know, but, you know, every now and then, it might not even be a qualitative question, might be something that you just want at scale.

00;28;56;29 - 00;29;18;07
Patricia
So think every every kind of question is different, but my I think anything abstract that needs to be talked through, if it's a sensitive topic, always an IDI. You know what I mean? So I think, however you want someone to do some testing, creative testing, like, maybe you want to do, an ethnography or an online board with a markup.

00;29;18;10 - 00;29;23;10
Patricia
so, yeah, I think it it completely depends, but abstract, traditional, that's what I'm going with.

00;29;23;11 - 00;29;26;09
Risa
You bring up a really good point that I want to build on. If I'm allowed to.

00;29;26;16 - 00;29;28;16
Frank
Do whatever you want.

00;29;28;18 - 00;29;47;19
Risa
is, you know, we lean a lot on our research partners to tell us when we're wrong about what the methodology is. Right? So, I think it's really important because with all these cool qualitative things out there, particularly some, some people in my team who are new to the field, right? They're relatively new. They're like, oh, I want to do this really quick qualitative thing.

00;29;47;22 - 00;30;04;04
Risa
And we will have research partners that will just do what they've asked because they're the client. Right. but the really, really good research partners are the ones that either say, well, I can't help you with that because what you actually need is not something we do or consider this other methodology. Let us help you put that together.

00;30;04;06 - 00;30;18;04
Risa
and I bring that up because I think it's relevant for a lot of the folks here. and shameless plug, clearly I, I love Dig Insights because I'm sitting here with them today. But one of the reasons that I do love the team is because there have been times where I've had pushback of, like, no, Risa,

00;30;18;04 - 00;30;21;10
Risa
That's not actually what you need. And that's a good research partner.

00;30;21;12 - 00;30;22;05
Frank
Yeah.

00;30;22;08 - 00;30;30;19
Patricia
And I have the three, the three, tri rule tell the client’s wrong. Tell the client's wrong, and then just do whatever they want.

00;30;30;21 - 00;30;36;14
Risa
That's fair. If I push back twice, then do it.

00;30;36;16 - 00;31;03;19
Frank
So speaking about that, you know when to think about qual and all the tools that are available to you. And what does that mean for the evolution of quantitative. When do you know when it's right to pull in qual, when it's right to pull in quant. And then with quant, you know, is it agile? Are you are you leaning in for quick hits or are you pulling back and doing something more strategic, like when do you know to forgo quant and you can only do qual or vice versa?

00;31;03;23 - 00;31;04;01
Frank
You know?

00;31;04;01 - 00;31;25;18
Risa
I love this question, in part because I have some strong opinions that I'm happy to share. I'd say, there there will always be a role for quant, right? Because quant is the way that we validate and quantify, whether something is an opportunity, whether it's a real space, whether, you know, whether it's, it's worth pursuing. quant is great.

00;31;25;20 - 00;31;43;02
Risa
You know, I always I talk to my team about risk based approach. Like we like our role in market research at a company like Kraft Heinz is to, manage risk. It's to figure out, like, where do we move quickly? Where do we move slowly? Where do we need to understand more? Where do we need to prove it out, and where do we know enough to just like, go forward.

00;31;43;02 - 00;32;01;10
Risa
Right. So, quantitative is great when I need the numbers and when I need to know for certain because maybe, you know what? Maybe I'm buying, a new plant, a new capability, a new tool for the plant, and it's extremely expensive. I'm not going to make that decision based on qualitative. Right. And so it's all about weighing the risk.

00;32;01;15 - 00;32;21;19
Risa
And then I would say the two work together. and oftentimes we pick one or the other. But like some of the best projects that I've seen go through have both because you either are maybe maybe you don't know enough to ask the right question. Like, you know, you got to write a questionnaire if you don't know the right way to ask the questions in a consumer meaningful way, then you got to do the qualifiers.

00;32;22;06 - 00;32;40;06
Risa
When we started plant based protein, when I think about that world, no one knew how to talk to consumers about it. And so how the heck would you write a questionnaire and make sure people are actually answering the questions like, I've been in this situation, I'm sure many have, where, you get a survey, you get survey results back and you're like, oh no, I asked this all wrong.

00;32;40;06 - 00;32;52;04
Risa
And the people were not responding as I expected them. You know, I've done something wrong. So qual can be great upfront for that. And then it can be great after quant right to get to the whys and dig deeper. So I think the two still are going to have to live on.

00;32;52;06 - 00;33;12;12
Frank
Yeah. And if I can just piggyback on that as a as a personally for me, a practitioner of both qual and quant, throughout my career, like today, what I love about today is the agileness of both of them right? To be able to have an iterative approach that I can jump back and forth between Qual and Quant seamlessly.

00;33;12;12 - 00;33;36;04
Frank
Yeah, and learn as I go, evolve my thinking as I go, ask better questions as I go, and build consensus right. You get to a better ending point. Both internally and then within the client as well. Like you get better consensus when you can go on this journey together and when you know it doesn't take five months anymore.

00;33;36;04 - 00;33;58;06
Frank
You know, I don't have to say I don't have to hold all my questions and commission a five month massive quantitative survey anymore. I can do this iteratively and agile and then peppering in qual along the way to contextualize and learn. And I think that's the real benefit of where we're at today. And I know, you know, I know you do this and I do this a lot of, you know, it's a real seamless integration between qual and quant.

00;33;58;06 - 00;34;15;28
Frank
Like, I don't ever look at and say, oh, this is a quantitative solution. It's like, no, this is what we need to do. And it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of b. And so I think that's it's so easy to do today. And it was always a cost barrier or a time barrier before. And I feel like those, those barriers have come down.

00;34;16;00 - 00;34;20;28
Risa
Yeah I agree completely.

00;34;21;00 - 00;34;25;26
Frank

00;34;25;28 - 00;34;44;20
Patricia
I want to jump in there though. Yeah. Just just as, you know, we were talking about before this. And while we talk about, like, where do you forego quant? I think to Risa’s point never. For the most part, you want to validate. You want to quantify? Unless you're just looking for directional results that, you know, maybe quant will come later.

00;34;44;23 - 00;35;04;09
Patricia
But I really do think about that fuzzy space right now. you know, before, when you would do a focus group, you're going to three cities. You're getting, you know, three focus groups per city and just have these small sample sizes. And when I think of like one area that, you know, we've been doing a lot of work in customer journey mapping, I was trying to think like

00;35;04;12 - 00;35;26;14
Patricia
where that's sometimes a fuzzy space. You are looking you are building a customer journey map. We usually do qual. Then we do quant. We build, we build the map and then we quantify it. But if you're doing 60 people now and they're doing three visits over the course of the week, all of a sudden you're at I'm a qualitative person, but like 180 data points, you know what I mean?

00;35;26;14 - 00;35;45;23
Patricia
Like is that is that strong enough? Yeah, I would still say still from our perspective at from Dig, we want to look at those moments that matter. We want to see where the impact is. But in a lot of instances 180 data points is is a lot. It's and they are the data qualities there. We know they're good people.

00;35;45;23 - 00;36;04;11
Patricia
We know they're real people. We know everything about their lives. We've watched that. It is it is becoming a substantial source of data right now. We're getting a lot more data than we ever got in a in a qualitative way that you know, there's times, like you said, depending on the decision to make where it may be enough.

00;36;04;13 - 00;36;05;06
Frank
Yeah.

00;36;05;08 - 00;36;07;06
Patricia
But again, always qualify.

00;36;07;08 - 00;36;22;20
Risa
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it's such a great point though, because like way back, like you could never get that much. You know, you had a few focus groups and maybe 30 people in total. Right. so I do think it comes back to like, the risk of being wrong in the decision you're making based on it.

00;36;22;23 - 00;36;23;29
Patricia
Yeah.

00;36;24;02 - 00;36;37;13
Frank
So Risa, you talked about this a little bit about, you know, senior leadership and getting building empathy within the organization. You know, you're a senior leader yourself within your organization. How connected do you feel to your consumers today?

00;36;37;18 - 00;37;02;25
Risa
Yeah. I'll be more honest than I should be. I wish I got to spend more time out with consumers. I miss that a little bit. but I would say more connected than I would be in this role previously, if that makes sense. Like, like a me ten years ago would not be as connected because of the online aspect, because of the ability to hear from consumers so readily.

00;37;02;27 - 00;37;24;16
Risa
so I'd say, you know, the other thing that I keep in mind is, you know, I mentioned being a consumer and talking about Amazon and the reviews and I they're like observing even when I'm not doing my job. Observing consumers and how people are interacting keeps me close. the from a brand perspective, for our businesses, I stay close with my team as they're working on things.

00;37;24;18 - 00;37;42;09
Risa
and I do think it's, it's up to me and it's up to the team to continue to showcase consumer videos. I there's, I just feel like that is a way that drives the consumer closeness across the company. So even if it's a quick snippet in a presentation, no one is going to complain when you show a video of consumers.

00;37;42;22 - 00;38;06;12
Risa
And when I talked about that brand loved one, it was for something I was trying to bring some life to, something I was presenting that was not that exciting. And it was related to brand love and driving brand love for our consumers and watching people watch the video. And everyone was smiling. How do you not smile when people are talking about how much they love certain brands and showing you in real life how they're using them, right.

00;38;06;14 - 00;38;24;10
Risa
and saying goofy things most of the time. So I guess, a long way of saying I feel fairly close to consumers because we have the ability to do the real time to watch the videos. I wish I was out. It goes back to that old fashion. Like, I'd love to shop with consumers more. It just doesn't happen as much as it as it once did.

00;38;24;12 - 00;38;42;12
Frank
So in our in our final wrap here. I'd love, Risa, for you to talk about. I love that you're saying you feel connected. You got a lot of information, like, do you have any final thoughts around how you break through that noise? Because there is a lot of information coming at you and your team, right?

00;38;42;24 - 00;38;46;12
Frank
And so how do you how do you break through that noise and organize it in a meaningful way?

00;38;46;15 - 00;39;05;11
Risa
Yeah. That is it's such a hard question. Right. And we have been talking about this. It's not a new question, but I think first of all, it's it's recognizing what matters. And as I think about, you know, some people were talking about AI, like some people say like, oh, wait, AI is going to take over our job, you know, and we're going to go away.

00;39;05;12 - 00;39;28;05
Risa
Like, I actually don't think that's the case because you need that human overlay to be able to say, like, it's great that all these people are talking about this thing, but it might not actually matter. Right. And so that's the piece. And then, you know, lastly, and I said this earlier about just not doing research and not listening to consumers when it's not necessary or when we know best ourselves.

00;39;28;05 - 00;39;42;26
Risa
And I think given all the noise and all the things out there, people become less sure of their gut instinct and their intuition. And again, like when I think about the most amazing consumer insight, professionals like those are people that have really strong intuition.

00;39;43;01 - 00;39;43;11
Frank
Yeah.

00;39;43;11 - 00;39;50;07
Risa
And really good, like gut feeling. And we have to lean on our gut in our intuition to recognize, like, what of the noise actually matters?

00;39;50;10 - 00;39;53;10
Frank
I love it, Patricia, any closing thoughts for you?

00;39;53;13 - 00;40;13;13
Patricia
I think I've said a lot. no, I think I think, you know, you started off the conversation with, like, you know, the the idea that, you know, the pendulum has to swing one way to come back, you know, at Dig, we've been very lucky, over Covid when a lot of qualitative research shops didn't, didn't survive. People were not in person anymore, that you were not finding consumers.

00;40;13;15 - 00;40;40;25
Patricia
We we grew like gangbusters. because we we leaned into the technology. We got there. We got there quickly and we learned how to kind of speak to consumers in that space. And I think that we are going, you know, full blown right now. You know, people are still online, they're still virtual. And we see the AI like, all all the videos, all the tools, just, you know, at, you know, at quant scale, I think I think we're coming back.

00;40;40;28 - 00;40;49;12
Patricia
we're out in field more. We're back and folks at facilities we’re out observing. So I really do think that, you know, we we're coming back to, to settle and to see what the new norm.

00;40;49;12 - 00;40;50;15
Patricia
Is going to be.

00;40;50;17 - 00;40;58;05
Frank
Thank you both. Thank you everyone for your attention. I welcome you to continue the conversation with any of us. Find us around, and if you want to continue the conversation, thank you so much for your time.

00;40;58;07 - 00;41;00;12
Risa
Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

00;41;00;14 - 00;41;07;25
VO
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