89 — The Researcher's New Toolkit: Navigating Future Trends with Clorox’s Anna Conte

Lenny: 00:00:00

Hello, everybody. It’s Lenny Murphy with another edition of the Greenbook Podcast. Thank you so much—taking time out of your busy day to spend it with me and my guest. And, today, I am joined by Anna Conte from Clorox Canada, the Associate Director of Human Insights. Anna, welcome.

Anna: 00:00:29

Thank you, Lenny. Yes. Once again, my name’s Anna Conte. I go by the pronouns she and her. I’m currently the Associate Director of Human Insights at Clorox Canada, and I work across several brands. People, when they think of Clorox, they automatically think of cleaning and bleach, but we have a number of great brands, Glad waste, Burt’s Bees, Brita water filtration, and some hidden gems like Hidden Valley Ranch and Pine-Sol as well.

Lenny: 00:01:00

Now, Burt’s Bees, I didn’t know that, that—

Anna: 00:01:05

Yeah. See?

Lenny: 00:01:05

—that Clorox—

Anna: 00:01:05

There’s always some surprises in there [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:01:07

There are. I mean, I’m a big fan of most of your products. You’re like, “Yeah. Got some of that. Got some of that.”

Anna: 00:01:11

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:01:11

But Burt’s Bees, that’s—okay, that’s fantastic.

Anna: 00:01:15

Mm-hm.

Lenny: 00:01:16

So [laugh] ...

Anna: 00:01:17

The great brand.

Lenny: 00:01:18

It is a great brand.

Anna: 00:01:18

Has a lot of love—lots of love for that brand.

Lenny: 00:01:21

Yeah. Yeah. It’s a great product. And where in—where are you in Canada?

Anna: 00:01:25

Our offices are in the Greater Toronto Area in a small little part called Brampton but part of Greater Toronto Area.

Lenny: 00:01:33

Okay. Toronto is a great city. We were chatting a little bit beforehand that, a few years back, I seemed to be—spent a lot of time with the MRIA and doing—speaking at events in Toronto, specifically. And I always very much enjoyed my time in Toronto.

Anna: 00:01:48

Yeah, it’s very diverse. There’s lots of arts, great restaurants, just, yeah... So it’s a big hub, yeah.

Lenny: 00:01:54

Yeah. And I was introduced to poutine.

Anna: 00:01:56

Ah, yes, yeah [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:01:57

Which is still—and I’ve tried to make it myself at home, and I just—I can’t get the same quality of poutine as I got in Toronto.

Anna: 00:02:08

Yeah. You have to venture to Quebec for some of the real, authentic poutine there, yeah.

Lenny: 00:02:13

Ah.

Anna: 00:02:13

Yeah.

Lenny: 00:02:14

Okay. All right. Duly noted then. All right. I mean, that’s worth a trip because, man, that’s just good stuff. Anyway [laugh] , so it’s great to have you here. So tell us about you, Anna.

Anna: 00:02:27

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:02:27

How did you wind up at Clorox? And, you know, give us your journey, your hero’s journey, your research hero’s journey.

Anna: 00:02:33

My research journey, well, like a lot of people, I kind of sort of fell into this field. I didn’t grow up saying, “Oo, I can’t wait to be a market researcher,” you know?

Lenny: 00:02:43

[laugh]

Anna: 00:02:44

I didn’t even know the profession existed. But I was always curious about people, why they behaved the way they did, the context and factors that shaped their choices. And I think it was that curiosity that drove me to pursue a degree in psychology. And then the university program that I went to was really research oriented. You know, I had courses on research methodology, sampling, statistical techniques, so I really developed that skill set. But then I came out, and I was like, “Oh, great. That was interesting. Now what?” And then I actually saw a local college program that built on those research skills, and it actually had a co-op field placement. And so I ended up working in market research, and then I never looked back. And now I’ve enjoyed the privilege of working in research for over 25 years. I’ve worked on the supplier and the client side. And, on the supplier side, I’ve had the opportunity to work in quantitative as well as qualitative firms. So I was a moderator, and that’s exciting—completely different skill set and flex different kind of muscles. And what’s nice about the supplier side, too, is that you get exposed to different categories. So you can work on financial, quick service, as well as CPG, which really broadens your understanding of the consumer and the joys, intentions in their lives. And then, on the client side, I previously worked at Nestlé and Kraft as well, where I influenced the strategic direction of some, like, long-standing, loved brands like KIT KAT and Häagen-Dazs, Cheez Whiz. And, yeah, and then, eventually, all—the roads led to Clorox.

Lenny: 00:04:32

That’s cool. Now, it seems like, when we have this conversation with folks in Canada, that there’s three companies on the supplier side that always come up. You’ve either worked for some variation of Angus Reid’s companies or Leger or Ipsos, with Steve leading Ipsos. So any of those? Was it one of those?

Anna: 00:04:53

So I did work at a company called Camelford Graham for a little time that was purchased by Ipsos. So you’re right. All paths lead to one of those three organizations [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:05:05

It seems that way, yes, so [laugh] ... And all wonderful, wonderful organizations to get your feet wet. I mean, you know, Nielsen, kind of globally, has always kind of owned—and it’s a great training place. So you go to Ipsos. You get your feet wet. You get exposed to a lot—or to Nielsen—and then you go out and do other stuff. So...

Anna: 00:05:27

Yeah. And you leap off from there. Yeah, I worked at, like, some great supplier side to get those fundamentals. But then, even client side, I worked at Kraft when it was one of those big organizations, and it had a large insights team with big, healthy budgets. So it was a great place to learn to the client side, yeah.

Lenny: 00:05:47

So let’s play off of that. So you’ve been 25 years. This is my 23rd year, so you’ve got me beat. You think about your tenure in both the client side and supplier side. What have seen change in terms of the emphasis from a buyer perspective that we’ve—maybe have we gone through less of an emphasis of methodology and more on impact? Or what does that look like for you?

Anna: 00:06:10

Yeah. That’s a great question, actually. You know, it’s kind of funny the way the world kind of goes. Like, sometimes you go from one extreme to the other. And, you know, it’s—fashion’s that way. You know, we had the baggy, bell-bottom jeans, then the skinny jeans. Now we’re back to the loose-fitting jeans, right? And I remember—and both on my client as well as the supplier side. So, when I was moderating as well as when I was client side at Kraft and Nestlé, you know, we were getting really personal with consumers and doing a lot of immersions and to really fuel those brand positioning research. And it was smaller sample size, really deep, you know, that touchy-feely stuff. And now we’re in this big-data AI world, and it’s a very different—like, plethora of data, which can feel, like, very not so emotional and very impersonal, right? And I think we’re going to see—and I’m kind of excited about this, actually. I know a lot of people are scared about AI and even for the industry. I guess my perspective on AI is that I just see it as a tool. And it’s very much in the hands of the person that’s kind of using that tool in terms of its opportunities, limitations, strengths, weaknesses. But what I’m seeing is, you know, we’re using it to really understand things at scale and maybe even craft, you know, very personalized message for all sorts of different people, but we’re trying to be everything to everyone, right? I think what we’re going to see is it come back, right? And I think this is where the power of the researcher comes back, so that’s—I’m not scared of the AI because I don’t think it’s possible—like, AI is not capable of being emotional. Like, it doesn’t have empathy like we do. And so I think we’re going to see this return where the power that—the researcher is going to come back, and we’re going to get really personal again. Because the problem with developing those AI-crafted messages is—especially to this younger audience, who I think is very emotional savvy, is that it—they can be less-authentic, potentially. So I see it returning to a space where it’s very emotional and very hands-on with the empathy of the researcher involved. And I saw the most powerful marketing campaigns being crafted when we looked at the intersection of kind of like the brand’s values and the consumer’s values. And I was always surprised, as a moderator, when doing that research, how they, like, lined up perfectly. And it makes sense because people are attracted to brands that are aligned to their values. They feel seen and heard. So I can see us getting back to that, to that really personal, touchy-feely, emotional-type research.

Lenny: 00:09:14

So that’s fantastic. So much to unpack from that.

Anna: 00:09:18

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:09:18

And fundamentally agree. As technology impacts how we do things, all right—and that’s fundamentally what it does. You know, it creates greater efficiencies of cost and speed and opens up more doors of ease of synthesis of information, et cetera, et cetera. But, fundamentally, we have to be the keepers of the ‘why,’ and that is the—that component. And as well as—and as you said, yeah, AI doesn’t create. AI combines, all right, in new ways that may seem creative. It may seem really amazing how it combines things, but the intuition, creativity, empathy, you know, all of those things, that’s not there. And so, increasingly, I think that that is what we will be, as researchers, tasked with owning and honing that to the idea of answering the business question to drive business impact. What do you think? Does that make sense to you?

Anna: 00:10:13

For sure, yeah. I mean, AI definitely has its uses, and I think you very much, like, touched on them. It makes things faster, the more automated-type pieces. I recently used it on a Britta study, actually. We were doing, like, a multicultural-type research, and we were talking to consumers from several different ethnicities. And it was a very flexible and adaptable tool in terms of being able to get to probe and speak to consumers in their native language and probe, like, projective techniques. So you could get qual-type answers at a quant scale. So it was very useful. And so it does have its usefulness as a tool. And then you still need to interpret all of the outputs and overlay that, you know, your thoughts and thinking and the strategic objectives of the business to use them in an actionable and compelling way.

Lenny: 00:11:18

So I want to drill on this a little bit more because it’s—this came up this week for me. A colleague had shared a conversation that they were having with a large marketing communications agency, and they said that they were getting pressure from a major CPG. I don’t know if it—maybe it was you. I don’t know.

Anna: 00:11:37

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:11:37

But they were—effectively, they were saying, “Look, we know that you’re utilizing AI to do many of these tasks that used to take 10 hours, and now it takes you 5. Why are you charging us for 10 hours when it’s only taking you 5? We expect to see a cost reduction in these functions as a result of the utilization of AI.” “Yeah. Of course.” So is that awareness, now, coming throughout the organization, particularly on, you know, the buyer’s side, to say, “You know what? It did used to take us—this was a $30,000 project,” maybe, you know, to use your example. And it would take two to three weeks, “but tools now allow us to accomplish this at half the time and, therefore, half the effort. So, therefore, you know, we should be able to still get to this same place, but it’s a $15,000 project in a week now.”

Anna: 00:12:29

Yeah. That’s a great—

Lenny: 00:12:31

Right.

Anna: 00:12:31

—great point, actually. So, when I tendered out this project and received, you know, a number of proposals back, there was only one organization, inca Nexxt Intelligence, who had pitched kind of their proprietary AI kind of tool. And it exactly permitted that. Like, it was at a great cost, quick timing. And that whole qual-at-quant scale, it actually not only gave me the quant, but it allowed me to validate some preexisting qual work that I had and validate it with this multicultural consumer at, like, quant sample size. So it was exactly that. It was efficient both in dollars and time.

Lenny: 00:13:18

That’s great. A good shout-out for our friends at inca. And, so as an industry, right, we’re both industry veterans. We’ve been around—we’ve been there from paper to telephone to—

Anna: 00:13:27

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:13:27

—online, you know. So, in one point, like, no surprise, right? We’ve always kind of thought we would get here. Didn’t exactly know the technology that would unlock it, but here we are, right? It’s here and has this transformational impact, and not just research but everywhere so every industry, because it creates efficiency. It’s from a process standpoint. And, yeah, I would argue. I don’t know that we’re there yet, where it’s a gamechanger in terms of creating more, more value in terms of strategic insights that move the needle. But it sure as hell makes it easier to get there.

Anna: 00:14:06

Yes, it does.

Lenny: 00:14:07

Right?

Anna: 00:14:08

Yeah. And, you know, like, you brought up other points. I mean, we’ve been, right, from phone to online. Like, I remember, when we went from phone to online, it was like, “Ah, we can’t do this [laugh] , you know. It’s sampling.”

Lenny: 00:14:18

[laugh] Right.

Anna: 00:14:20

Right? And—

Lenny: 00:14:20

Right. Right.

Anna: 00:14:20

And it was a tool. And this is a tool, right? But you have to be bold. Like, you have to try it because that’s the way you learn its strengths, its weaknesses, you know, how to adapt it, its best uses. And so, I don’t know, I’ve always been more on the early adoption kind of, of methods because I think that just—better to learn early and then figure out how to best embrace it.

Lenny: 00:14:48

Yeah. Yeah.

Anna: 00:14:48

For good, right? For good. Because then you can move it in a positive way.

Lenny: 00:14:54

Could not agree more. I’ve been harping to everybody. It was like, “You can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and wait for this. We need—this is the experimental phase.”

Anna: 00:15:01

Yeah. Let’s [shape] it. Let’s shape it, right?

Lenny: 00:15:05

Right. Right. It’s happening very fast, faster than we’ve seen any other technology from a disruption standpoint. We don’t have the luxury like the online, the migration to phone and to online. That took roughly five years. I don’t think we have five years. I think we—at the rate things are going, we have, like, five months [laugh] , you know. So, yes, we have to embrace it. Now, I would love to get your take on this as well, which totally—we didn’t talk about this beforehand. So, as you think about this future impact, well, this current impact and this future state we’re moving towards, right, what do you think that does to research as a function within the organization as we’re democratizing, as these tools make information more easily accessible, and, to many extents, kind of templatizes some pretty standard research approaches, right, the concept test, things like that that are, you know, pretty standardized? Do you see insights growing in importance across the organization with different key stakeholder groups? Or do you think that it becomes kind of commoditized, almost like ‘search’? Everybody can search, you know, and that it’s just kind of taken for granted. What do you think?

Anna: 00:16:19

I think our role changes. And I think, on the part of smart organizations, we’re just as important. But what ends up happening is—it’s kind of like, you know, sometimes how they used to, like, want to drill down a whole bunch of metrics into one number because it was faster—

Lenny: 00:16:38

Right.

Anna: 00:16:38

—and better, right?

Lenny: 00:16:39

The—and, yes [laugh] .

Anna: 00:16:39

Like, yeah. Exactly.

Lenny: 00:16:42

Right.

Anna: 00:16:42

“What’s the equity score? And let’s have it all in one neat little number.” But you still need—you still—like, it doesn’t matter how many data points. And, even if you have this one neat, little tidy scorecard, you still need someone to kind of overlook it and provide meaning and interpret it and how to leverage it and how to use it. You’re right. Dat-, demo-, I always have trouble with that word. De-, democratization of data [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:17:11

[laugh]

Anna: 00:17:12

Like, everybody can pull it now. And I, you know, I even have, you know, my assistant brand managers pulling Google, you know, all sorts of data points. But the thing is, is we have the expertise on how to interpret it correctly, make sure there is the right sample, be objective. We, through our years of experience, know how to stand back from the data points, you know, and take away our biases, our emotional reactions, how to look at all the different data sets to provide the meaning, like, the path forward. Because, sometimes, the brand teams and business teams can get lost in all those data points. And then they get mired in it and don’t see the path to move forward. And so I think—

Lenny: 00:17:59

Right. Forest for the trees, right?

Anna: 00:18:01

Yeah, like we’re the navigators.

Lenny: 00:18:02

Yeah.

Anna: 00:18:03

So we help them connect the most meaningful dots and simplify it. Because, you know, you need to take those 200 pieces of data to, like, 3 that are really going to drive the business forward so that they can create the streams of work that are going to be meaningful to drive their business.

Lenny: 00:18:22

I love that, ‘the insight navigator.’ I mean, and maybe that becomes a new title, right? Because I think that speaks to the issue, you know, “lots of data. But what matters? What’s meaningful?” And that’s the insight, right? The insight isn’t the results. The results—tons of information. That’s easy. There is no dearth of information, and there hasn’t been for a very long time.

Anna: 00:18:47

Yeah. And I think that’s what makes for a good researcher too, by the way, like, or one of their skill sets, right—is be able to see out of, like, all the tons of data what are the, like, meaningful three or four pieces that, whoever your stakeholder is, really needs to drive kind of their overall objectives.

Lenny: 00:19:08

So I have discovered, over time, that I am more of a qual-ie at heart than a quant guy, which is not what I expected [laugh] , the evolution of my career. I mean, I rely more on intuition. I rely more on, you know, “Okay. Here’s this data point, and here’s that data point. And what’s missing is the connective tissue between those, so we—that’s what we better ask,” right, is to understand what is the connection between these disparate data points because it seems to point towards this potential outcome. And, if that’s the case, we need to understand, you know, how to get there. And that’s an intuitive process.

Anna: 00:19:48

It is.

Lenny: 00:19:49

It is not—

Anna: 00:19:49

Yeah.

Lenny: 00:19:50

—something I can look at. I mean, I can look at the numbers, right, obviously. And I, you know, I don’t—I’m definitely not ‘data jockey’ anymore, but I knew my way around SPSS back in the day. But it is that meaning behind it.

Anna: 00:20:01

Yeah, I love that. I mean, a good researcher is both objective but then it has strong gut instincts, right? Like, because they have to be objective to be biased, but then there’s so many data points that they have to have that gut kind of reaction on what to deep-dive into or look at further, right? And then they have to be tenacious, I think, as well.

Lenny: 00:20:23

Yeah, and curious—

Anna: 00:20:24

Yeah.

Lenny: 00:20:24

—to understand that, “Well, what’s the ‘why’?” Right, again, thank you. The title is ‘insights navigator.’ The subtitle is ‘keeper of the ‘why’’, you know, the ‘let’s understand what’s really driving this’. And that is—those are the things that I do not believe that AI will replace anytime soon. We need to understand unconscious measurement, you know, emotional states, values, yada, yada, yada. All that’s changing, continues to change so rapidly. I think that we are in a cultural, transformational stage that’s driven by so many factors across the board. It’s just this cornucopia of pressure that is just transforming so many things, and we need to understand why. And we can’t rely upon the old paradigms, the old contextual frameworks that we have used, to get—collect new information in new ways, faster, cheaper, you know, better. AI is going to power all that, but we got to figure out what’s really the right—the strategically important insight to help navigate the change.

Anna: 00:21:30

The power is in our hands, right? It’s up to us to demonstrate our worth and value because it is important. Like, we pay—I think we play a very key role.

Lenny: 00:21:39

I agree. So there was a conversation I was in earlier today before we recorded this of, you know, “What do you think? What’s the—if we look at, like, the [SMR] , you know, market sizing data.” You know, is that going to increase or shrink? And, like, well, I think it’s going to increase, but it’s going to change. The distribution is going to change significantly where money is spent, right? There’s not an AI category in that right now. Next [laugh] —you know, there’s going to be, right, those tools, the technology tools, they’re going to increasingly take share of budget overall. But I think that the value of insights will continue to grow and become more accessible, not just across organizations like Clorox that have large budgets, and you spend, you know, the—also, small business that have been priced out of conducting efficient research and now will have the ability to do that in new ways. And I think all that’s incredibly, incredibly exciting.

Anna: 00:22:36

Yeah. The road’s going to be bumpy, right? It’s going to be disruptive. But isn’t that when the greatest innovation happens, right, in a way, right? You need the disruption. You need the tension, right. It’s kind of like when you do consumer research and innovation research. You look for the tension. Where are they—where are the pain points? And that’s when, you know, the magic starts to happen because then—that’s when you get creative and you ideate, and it’s no different for our field if you think about it, right. I mean, we’re going to have innovation that is disruptive. And then we’re going to figure out, like, the way. It might be bumpy. And then ‘wow’, we’re going to come out with some really exciting capabilities and tools.

Lenny: 00:23:20

Yeah. I love that. That’s fantastic. And I just realized, you know, before started, we—for our listeners, we always have kind of a brief that Natalie, our producer, writes, just to give us a kind of a guide, basically, for our conversation. We haven’t touched on a single—

Anna: 00:23:35

No, I know.

Lenny: 00:23:36

—darn thing.

Anna: 00:23:37

We totally [laugh] ...

Lenny: 00:23:38

But we have. We have. Actually, we have touched on the essence of each of the points that we had kind of fleshed out, just in a radically different way, conversationally. And this is why I love to do—you know, hosting podcasts. But there is one of those points that I do want to bring up—and I think it’s relevant to this—that in this period of disruption and change, you have internal clients. And they have their own biases, and they, “Nope, this is what people use Clorox Bleach for.” Right [laugh] ? Let’s just use that example. And you’re doing studies like, “Well, actually, they’re—now they’re looking at, yeah, a different use case or a different product because their priorities have changed.” What are some times in kind of navigating that aspect of things, when you have findings that challenge maybe orthodoxy within an organization and how you think about things?

Anna: 00:24:31

Yeah. So that happens, like, all the time [laugh] , right? It does happen. And, of course, but, you know, it doesn’t matter, like, whether you work in insights, finance, marketing, sales, like, you really have one common objective, right? And it’s to drive the business growth. And it doesn’t matter if you’re GM, you know, you’re the associate marketing manager, it’s still a common goal, right? So the way I kind of learned or found successful in kind of handling that is I start with that common goal, like, of what we’re all kind of trying to achieve. And then I’ll look into my data and find maybe the few—depending on the audience, right. Like, if I’m talking GM—and actually, I have an example of this happening on Glad waste, actually. So why don’t I use that? So it was Glad waste, and this is in Canada. And it’s basically a two-player market. We’ve got Glad being the key brand, and we have private label, so just that. And we were in this perpetual state of losing share to private label. It wasn’t pretty. And we were leveraging a North American strategy at the time. But I knew that the Canadian waste landscape was different because, in Canada, we have government-supported compost and recycling programs. So I hypothesized that this, you know, resulted in unique consumer habits, attitudes, intentions, when it came to waste management. And I could also see, in the research available, that Canadians were drawn to Glad for different reasons than we were communicating. So I remember meeting—and it was with my GM at the time because he was a bit disgruntled with, you know, the state of the business and how it was doing. And so I brought him a few key slides, just a few key slides with data points that diverged from current beliefs, my hypothesis on why, and then a research learning plan. But I started with our common goal, like, that we wanted to disrupt. We wanted to share this—stop this continuous share-loss to control label, and set our brand on a path to business growth. So I started from there, a few data points on the existing research—because this is the GM. You don’t want to, like, mire him in data—my hypothesis and the learning plan. And I got alignment on the spot to move forward with the research and the budget to go with it. But it starts with that common goal. Like, what—you know, it doesn’t matter who you’re speaking to, what function, what level. What are we all trying to achieve? And then, you know, a few key data points from the research, right, that might diverge with current beliefs, and then what your hypothesis are, and a plan to go from there. And I—you know, that’s successful, but you got to start with the perspective, I think, that—of the common goal, like, very important.

Lenny: 00:27:31

Absolutely agree. And, actually, you know, I’m thinking, you know, that’s wisdom that applies, not just in research but in the world in general. So it’s—I have a 27-year-old daughter. Actually, she’ll be 28 on Monday from the time we recorded this. Anyway, you know, with that age gap, you know, we’ll have conversations. And she thinks, “If dad thinks this, I’m on the opposite end,” right. And, often, the conversation is, “Look, we are on the same side because we are united in principle on our common goal, right? We want to be good humans and do good things. And, you know, we love our family. And let’s start there, right, because everything else is just a tactic.”

Anna: 00:28:08

Yeah. Like, in insights, you don’t want to just be the purveyor of data, right, and insights. You want them to be—like, to drive things forward, right? And I think to be that catalyst, I think, you have that, like, what I’ll call ‘business empathy’. You know, your ability to put yourself in a different role, see the, like, the larger objective, and then go, “Okay. What, from my capabilities and from what I know, can I bring to this to move it forward?” And I think that’s the way insights is a catalyst, right. You don’t want to just sit on interesting data points—and then be passionate [laugh] , right?

Lenny: 00:28:53

I love that, Anna. That’s fantastic and, I think, a great path forward as we go through this, you know, period of change. Because as we—the value is how do we navigate—your ‘insight navigator’—all these—this change to drive business value across the board? And that’s never going to go out of style, right?

Anna: 00:29:12

No, I hope not [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:29:15

[laugh] .

Anna: 00:29:16

I love what I do, so I don’t want to stop doing it.

Lenny: 00:29:18

Yeah. It’s very cool. I want to be conscious of your time, as well as the time of our listeners. So, before we head into wrap-up, is there something that you wanted to make sure that we touched on that I did not touch on?

Anna: 00:29:33

No. I think, in, as you said, in a roundabout way, I think we kind of got to all the meaningful elements. So, yeah, no, thanks. This was a fantastic experience.

Lenny: 00:29:43

Well, that’s good to know.

Anna: 00:29:45

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:29:45

And, for other perspective guests in the future, if you’re listening—

Anna: 00:29:50

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:29:50

—right, it’s all good. So what’s—what are you looking forward to now as we head into the tail end of 2023 and 2024? What has you excited?

Anna: 00:30:01

I think it’s what I mentioned earlier. Like, I’m really looking forward to getting, you know, past maybe the AI, big-data, like, and just get personal with the consumers and brands again. Like, I’m—that’s—I see that on the horizon, and I see a couple of projects like that coming up. And I’m—that’s what I’m looking for from a research perspective, yeah.

Lenny: 00:30:27

Very cool. And what about you as a person, a little glimpse?

Anna: 00:30:30

A glimpse? Well, these days, I’m all about housing and renovating. We recently renovated an old arts-and-crafts bungalow, and, I mean, we gutted it, added a second story, like, huge. And I caught the bug. So, like, that’s all I seem to be consuming from a media perspective is anything housing or renovating. And, yeah, I’m just looking forward to that next project as well [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:30:59

Very cool. So, yeah, there’s a common theme there around, you know, transformation.

Anna: 00:31:03

Ah.

Lenny: 00:31:04

So...

Anna: 00:31:04

Look at that [laugh] .

Lenny: 00:31:07

Yeah. There’s my intuition talking. So, all right. Well, very cool. Where can people find you?

Anna: 00:31:13

LinkedIn is a good spot.

Lenny: 00:31:14

Okay.

Anna: 00:31:15

They can just message me through there.

Lenny: 00:31:17

Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day. We don’t get that many client-side folks to take time, sit down, talk. It’s vitally important for the entire industry for everyone to kind of know what your prospective is, so thank you. And just what a pleasure getting to know you. So...

Anna: 00:31:34

Aw, thank you. Likewise. Thanks so much. This has been wonderful. Have a wonderful weekend, Lenny.

Lenny: 00:31:39

Thank you, Anna. You do the same. And, with that, we will wrap up this episode of the Greenbook Podcast. As always, huge, huge thank you to our producer, Natalie. She makes all of this happen. I just show up and run my mouth. Our editor, Big Bad Audio, who also makes sure that all of this sounds great so you can enjoy it. And, of course, thank you to our listeners because, without you, Anna and I wouldn’t have had the excuse, necessarily, to meet and chat and have this great conversation. So, thank you. And that’s it. We’ll see you on another edition of the Greenbook Podcast soon. Bye-bye.