93 — Riding the Waves of Technological Hype: A Market Research Journey with Edward Appleton

Lenny: 00:00:00

Hello, everybody. It’s Lenny Murphy with another edition of the Greenbook Podcast. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to spend it with myself and my guest. And today is going to be a fun one. So my guest is Edward Appleton. For those of you who are not familiar with that name, well, you should be. Edward’s been around the industry for a long time. He’s going to give his own bio, but his blog has been a must-read for many, many years. And he’s just a fantastically insightful, funny, and no-BS guy—someone that I’ve appreciated for a very long time. And it’s great to finally have him on the podcast. So, Edward, welcome.

Edward: 00:00:51

Thank you, Lenny. Thank you. It’s good to catch up. It’s good to see you, hear you voice. And, yeah, I’m really looking forward to it.

Lenny: 00:00:58

I am as well. And, hopefully, we’ll both still feel that way at the end. So…

Edward: 00:01:01

You never know.

Lenny: 00:01:02

You never know. Absolutely. All right. So a lot of folks may not be familiar with you. So I will leave it to you to kind of give the bio that you want to deliver.

Edward: 00:01:10

The story I’d like to tell about myself—so, yeah, Lenny introduced me. My name is Edward Appleton. I am a researcher by profession. I started off way back in London with a research agency. So I’ve—a company called Mass Observation, which my UK colleagues will know was a very ancient but prestigious organization doing really cool stuff in the Second World War for the Ministry of Defense. So I was there for a few years. I tried to learn about sampling and statistics and all the things that have gone out fashion now days. And then I went to the client side and Nestle. And that’s kind of been sort of like—if you like that pattern, so agency side then going client side. That’s been the pattern over my career, my, wow, 25, 30 years in market research. Except my wife is German. That’s a big thing. We left the UK in 1989. I don’t think I had anything to do with the falling of the Berlin Wall, but it was there when I went, and it wasn’t a few weeks later. And I’ve been in Germany ever since, with one year at Edinburgh and working for an advertising agency as—that was the exception. So I’m not going to take you through any more. I got fascinated by qualitative research in about 2014, ’15 and joined a boutique called Happy Thinking People in Berlin. And I stepped away from the sort of, like, the hands-on doing stuff and took care of their promotion, so a bit of marketing, a bit of sales, a bit of R&D, a bit of PR. And I’ve known Lenny for quite a while. We’ve always had lively conversations, polite disagreements. And I’m honored to be part of his—of this big podcast today. So thank you, Lenny. Is that enough?

Lenny: 00:02:52

I think so [laugh]. It’s never enough, Edward. But, at least for our audience, it gives them a sense. So, you know, if people have not been reading Research and Reflect, which you’ve been going, gosh, what, 10, 12 years?

Edward: 00:03:06

Longer, yeah. Yeah.

Lenny: 00:03:07

Yeah. Long, long time. It’s an amazing—if you started reading it in the beginning, like I did, until now, it tracks, through your experience, the progression of the industry in many, many ways and with the view that you’ve always taken that’s slightly—yeah. I still—I struggle. I’m still struggling with the word. We talked about it before we went live, but I’m still going to use ‘cynical’ for lack of a better term—but meaning, “Hey… wait a minute. Let’s not buy into all the hype, right? Let’s pay attention to things,” and a reminder of the basics of what matters, you know, of quality and delivering impactful insights rather than getting blinded by the bright shiny objects that we continue to get caught up in. Is that a pretty fair summation of the perspective that kind of infuses all of your writing?

Edward: 00:03:57

I have kind of, like, you know, sort of an empirical skepticism, which says, you know, what are the facts here that are beyond a narrative. What do I know, and sort of, like, what’s somebody trying to conceal or not tell me? And where are they getting ahead of themselves in terms of where they would like to be? So, yeah, when you said earlier on, you know, slowing things down. Maybe it’s not slowing things down but putting a critical lens to things and saying, “Well, this is my take.” Maybe I’m wrong—but sharing my point of view for what it’s worth.

Lenny: 00:04:34

Oh, yeah. I think it’s been important. So it’s something I’ve tried to actually emulate that you’ve inspired to me as well to—

Edward: 00:04:40

Really?

Lenny: 00:04:40

—to, like, you’ve—yes.

Edward: 00:04:42

Oh, my goodness.

Lenny: 00:04:42

Really. Truly. I know. I mean, you’re one of my heroes, Edward.

Edward: 00:04:46

Oh, Lenny. That means I—

Lenny: 00:04:49

[laugh]

Edward: 00:04:49

—you can ask me who my heroes are at the end, and now you just cancelled the answer. I can’t say it, can I?

Lenny: 00:04:55

[laugh] Yeah.

Edward: 00:04:56

I’ll come up with—

Lenny: 00:04:57

Right.

Edward: 00:04:58

No, I’ll find a way around that. We’ll get there. Don’t worry.

Lenny: 00:05:00

Okay. All right. Good enough.

Edward: 00:05:02

Don’t worry.

Lenny: 00:05:02

Good enough.

Edward: 00:05:02

We’ll have a few heroes, and you’ll appear. Don’t worry.

Lenny: 00:05:06

Oh, well, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Edward: 00:05:08

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:05:08

But, truly, and I think especially lately, right, for the past year, when we’re in another period of disruption. I mean, crap, we’ve been in a period of disruption for, you know, the last 20 years. But it seems as if, you know, there is a new technology, AI, that really does have the potential to change a lot of the role, the function, the process of insights. It’s not hype anymore. It’s being proven. And I think, like you, I’ve been thinking a lot about, “Okay. Well, that could be a good thing because it will push us back to the fundamentals in some ways, the fundamental value, while also taking away some of the fundamentals of the science because the technology can do some of that for us.” So I have tried to emulate that. I think it’s—you’ve made some really important points. So let’s start there. Give me your state of the union. What do you see happening? What do you think right now—the state of play in the insight space?

Edward: 00:06:11

So I think you’ve said it really nicely, Lenny, that, you know, there have been waves of hype driven by, you know, technology since, wow, 20 years, maybe a bit longer. And, if you go back to, I don’t know—if I put my qual hat on back in the 2003, ’04, there was a lot of talk from tech players that they would eradicate qualitative research. And there was a lot defensiveness about from the qualitative—let’s call it community for want of a better word. But there was a lot of pushback and say, “Oh, it sounds like—hey… this is very arrogant, and they’re getting ahead of themselves.” And so it proved that there was a lot of sort of, like, hype of people saying this is validated before it was validated. And I think if you look forward to now, it’s like is this similar? And I would say probably not. I don’t think so. I think this is much [laugh], much bigger, generative AI, and it really does seem to convince on—you know, even if you just—if you say this is a small, experimental piece of research you’ve done, but it’s giving pretty scarily good results. And synthetic data doesn’t seem to be—you know, the word ‘bad’ is not written on it all. It seems to be quite convincing. So, yes, the quality question still remains. And the strategic relevance still remains. But I think it’s a big, big—you know, going to be a big, big thing for market research. And it’s going to change masses of business models. If you’re in the business of, say, a sample provider and you don’t need a sample—because you say, “Well, what do I do with that?” You know, if synthetic data turns out to be, in three years’ time, reasonably valid for my needs in my category in my language, why would I need to pay to ask people if I only need 80 percent 85 percent accuracy? Then I’ll save myself a lot time, a lot of money. So I think it’s going to knock out a lot. But I’ve always sort of, like, had one of my hobby horses that data is not insights. Just because you have data doesn’t mean you’re a smart person. If it did, we probably would be both very rich, and we’re trying our best to be smart. You’ve got to make sense of it. You’ve got to talk to people who are making decisions and saying this is something that’s going to help you make a better decision. And I think that’s something the industry has been grappling with for a long time. It’s not a new concept, but it means you have to understand a category very well. You have to have the ability to get—communicate what you want to say. You have to be—if you like, it’s very old fashioned. You have to be a proper consultant with a bias towards data, towards analytics, towards a degree of ability to be a nerd if it’s necessary. You’ve got to do that. And, if you don’t, I think you’ll—probably your margins will be continue to be eroded, and you will be just pushed aside by—not even other market researchers, you’ll be pushed aside by people in IT, people in marketing, all these adjacent disciplines who are powerful, who have much deeper pockets—and not even mentioning the larger consultancies out there who are very good at doing what I just mentioned. And you said, you know, I’m the anti-BS merchant. Marketing—that’s another thing. You know, if you can’t market yourself, you’re going to struggle. And again, so many things—many opportunities, but also, I think, dangers as probably I’ve never seen them before in the research industry. And I don’t want to be a Cassandra. I don’t want to be a Pollyanna. But I think it’s going to be—this is going to be one of the biggest battles, if not the last battle.

Lenny: 00:09:52

I can’t say I disagree. Just last night—we’re recording this at the very tail end of November. I’m not sure when it’s going to live. But a friend of mine I’ve worked with on—with advisory with another company years ago—and reached out to me and said, “Hey… I’m working on something new in AI. Do you want to see it?” “Yeah. Sure. Cool.” Oh, my God. Now, and this was a marketing application to effectively streamline the production of content, of marketing content across multiple platform and form factors. And it mimics the persona of the brand and is specific to, you know, your category. So we used Greenbook as a, you know, demo. And it pulled in some of my blog posts. And the output was staggeringly good. Was it perfect? No. But my thought was, “Okay. This just eliminated, you know, multiple roles in the organization potentially, right?” And it was driven by data, you know, in a very different way. So that’s an example of, look, we’re seeing—you know, I just saw this application, one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time within the marketing organization—and certainly know that we’re seeing rapid development along similar lines within the insights organization. I mean, yeah, Survey Monkey just launched their—which it’s Survey Monkey, so… But they just launched their solution of, yeah, AI will write all your questionnaires based off of the library of every questionnaire that’s ever been written. Those types of things are incredibly disruptive overall. So we agree. Now, you’ve just hung out your shingle as an independent consultant. So I would assume that you have a bit of a plan in thinking, “All right. Here’s this world where the process of research, probably not what we’re going to—I’m not going to make my money with designing and developing projects and potentially doing analytics.” So what does that consulting look like for you? And what do you think that looks like for everybody else?

Edward: 00:12:05

Well, I wrote a blog post about this. And I sort of, like, think it’s challenging. Machines are challenging us to say who are we as human beings. What is our actual voice? Can we express it? And can we use that in a way to take something which is very clear, very well structured? What a machine can do will be pretty logical, probably much more logical than me. It will give you all the information you need. It will do it very quickly, and it will cost you nothing. So what is my role? My role to say, “Okay. But I actually prefer watching films and cat videos or whatever,” my emotional being, right? I like getting excited, and I forget most of what people tell me. So I’m a System 1 person. So you’re going to say, “That’s normal. That’s what everybody is. We are not machines.” Now you’re going to say, “Okay. So what does that mean for you as a professional?” It means you need to stress your own ability to turn what is essentially a very good platform into something that’s going to: inspire; well, that’s a high bar, which is going to be memorable; that’s a high bar, which is going to convince somebody to give you more than 15 seconds of their mental time. So it’s going to be even worth saying, “Oh, I’d like to hear a bit more of that. I’d like to turn the page. Can we have another conversation?” Can you do that? So it’s a lot about the human skills and having the confidence or the ability of the training to do that. So what does that mean? I mean, for me, personally, I think sort of, like, making insights come alive is something that you still see in many conferences. It doesn’t quite do it. People [laugh] stand on stage, and they have a great title, normally. That’s why they’re on stage. Somebody’s written them a great title. And then, 20 minutes later, you think, “What did I just—what was that about? I got a corporate presentation full of interesting slides. I didn’t get enough real examples, zero case studies, and I remembered very little of it. The visualization was mediocre to just nothing.” And you think, “If this was you presenting in public, is that because you are not allowed to present your best stuff in public? Is it because your company is telling you you’re not allowed to do it? Or was this good enough?” And I think the role is going to be ‘don’t be good enough’. Try to find the niche that you’re going to be very good at that people will remember you for, even if they don’t necessarily like it. You used the word ‘cynical’. I would say maybe even dare to polarize a bit, push it. You know, try to find your audience that says, “Well, here’s a deck potentially of 80 slides. I’m going to give you one.” Not everybody wants that. Find the one person that actually says, “That’s a great place to start.” It might be cultural. It might be—you know, maybe they don’t like the sound of your voice, whatever. But I think you’ve got to push for the human and try to have sort of, like, a creative spin on what I think will—the logical stuff. The very basic stuff will have been done for you, and you have to add something to that. The grunt stuff will be gone. And I think, you know, if you’ve said, “Well, actually, I enjoy the grunt stuff,” then maybe it’s time to think of retraining and doing something different if that’s maybe not too radical. But I think that’ll be a lot which is gone, and the people that feel comfortable on the—you know, I don’t want to—I just want to do analytics. Then become, you know, a brilliant sort of statistician. You know, go to places where you think nobody else has been there. So I think it’s about the—coming back to your original question—I think it’s about, you know, the antithesis of machine is the human. And, you know, I don’t think that hearing machine—maybe it will be there sooner than I think. There will be no difference between Edward Appleton’s voice, and you could replicate me. Well, it’s possible. But, in the meantime, I’d say, “Okay. The moment I think that’s happened, I’ll try and reinvent myself and try and find something which is different,” when people say, “Well, you haven’t heard that before.” You know, try and write like Earnest Hemmingway. It’s not easy, Lenny. You know, it’s not [laugh]. There is something called human talent. Trying to make a good joke—it’s not easy. So I think there are areas. Try to be—try to emulate the English sense of irony. It’s not easy. So it’s just finding areas, I think, which—and, from an insights point of view, I think it’s, you know, making insights not just actionable but inspiring, memorable; the people want it. And say, “Will I still want those people in my organization?” And when they’re going through a reorganization saying, “No, we’re not going to cut that budget. We’re not going to cut that headcount. We’ve got to keep those people because they add value.” And you have to be very—yeah, not just hope that the rationale will get you there. It’s got to be more than that and will be—you know, hopefully, the human aspect. So maybe I’m being romantic, but that’s kind of, like, my take.

Lenny: 00:16:52

No, I love that. It was actually a conversation with my wife just a few weeks ago, and we were talking about, you know, our robot overloads and [laugh], you know, where that’s—where we’re going. And she is far, far brighter than I am in every possible way. And she pointed out—we were talking about the mechanics of how LLMs work. And it occurred to both of us during that conversation that these technologies are fantastic at remixing things. They don’t create anything, not truly. And that is that innate humane ability, creativity, intuition, you know, those things that, to date, as far as I know, have not been duplicated with lines of code. And, when I hear you talking, you know, I kind of equate to what are those human abilities. And I think it is, you know, intuition and creativity and, certainly, deep subject matter expertise and the ability to connect dots and sense making that are what we’re all going to have to lean into. And some folks won’t necessarily do that well. And even writing good prompts in the world of generative AI—effectively, it’s asking good questions. So I think there’s still new applications of the skill set that we’ve always had, but it will be challenging to deploy them in new ways.

Edward: 00:18:15

And I think you have to fight for the space and the money that’s going to allow you to do things that are perhaps been not budgeted for traditionally. Because we’re in a sort of—like, still in the speed, agility mode. And you have to say, “Well, yes.” But for, you know, let’s say key projects. Plan in some time, plan in some money to make it more than just, you know, “Yeah, I got it. I understand it. I’ve got to do these one, two, three.” Plan in some more stuff. And that’s going to be necessary for clients to have the standing amongst their stakeholders to push back and to find the space in their budgets, in their headcount, in their team, saying, “Yeah, we all want a work/life balance. But there’s certain ones where we want to..”—they want to just make sort of, like, an E-grade Netflix film. We want to make something which is pretty damn cool. It doesn’t have to be big. It could be 90 seconds. It could be just a piece of text, but it should be cool. And all the people say, “Wow.” You can’t do that every time. You can’t do that, you know, every month. But it’s going be something which people say, “Wow. I find that impressive.” And you have to choose your moments. You know, you have to choose your customers. You choose your—so, and, you know, you’re not going to win all battles, but something that which says, “Yeah. Actually, I was proud of that.” And, well, you know, when we’re all gone, you know, people look back and say, “Yep. That was cool.” And I think you have to sort of, like, step up to the task of taking on your own marketing. You know, you’re a genius at it, Lenny. And I think a lot of people could learn from you. And it isn’t just about, you know, making sure you go through the regulars of doing things frequently, being sympathetic, and intelligence. It’s about much more than that. And you’ve got to, here, lean forward, and say, “I am,” with sort of, like, a voice, a presence. And you carve your own niche. And then, yes, there’s more. You know, you’ve got to be good at networking. On the client side, that’s absolutely essential. You know, what does the finance director think? I mean, he certainly, she certainly won’t care about your sort of, like, metrics. But, you know, do you know what their metrics are? Do you spend any time with them—that kind of stuff. So it’s a—I think it’s, you know, it’s still a very cool place to be, but the urgency of these—I don’t think they’re new challenges, but I think the urgency of these challenges is going to be become [sigh] massive, honestly. And then there’s the whole backdrop of industry consolidation, you know, of and my personal history. You know, I didn’t think I would be doing what I am now seven or eight months ago, but that’s life. You know, you lose your personal ownership, and people step away from businesses saying, “I’ve had enough.” That’s also life, you know. And you’ve got to be able to pivot. And, if you have the energy to do it, then you have to, I think, think, yeah, more emotionally. Like, yes, that’s what it’s about. It’s about emotions—and dare to sort of be who you want to be, and get beyond clichés, and get beyond sort of, like, you know, the job when you read on LinkedIn, and say, you know, “How do I become something different?” You’ve done it. I mean, you’ve been massively successful. And I think, you know, maybe we could all learn from, you know, your sort of, like, you know, path over the last 15, 20 years as well—so, you know, throwing the praise right back at you, Lenny.

Lenny: 00:21:35

Oh, well, I appreciate that. I think it is interesting for someone like me. I’m a failed CEO, right? I went down that path, went down the, you know, the traditional business manager path and realized because of my own personality and probably character flaws, you know, that I’m not particularly good at those things. But I am pretty quick and have intuition, imagination, and creativity and can adapt pretty readily. And, so, thank you. Also, thinking about those skill sets for our listeners and as we evolve overall, l think that should resonate with many people that, you know, to have your personal brand and your—knowing who you are and lean into that as much as you possibly can. And, to your point, somehow, the universe seems to align with that, where we can actually make good livings by being who we are.

Edward: 00:22:39

Yeah.

Lenny: 00:22:39

As long as we’re not total assholes, right? I mean, that’s—

Edward: 00:22:41

Right.

Lenny: 00:22:42

—a whole other thing. But [laugh]…

Edward: 00:22:44

And throwing into that, you know, I always bandied about the phrase ‘the power of small numbers’. The smallest number is yourself, your own voice, your inner voice. If you think it’s shit, if you think it’s terrible, then it probably is. Then don’t even share it with anybody else.

Lenny: 00:23:00

[laugh]

Edward: 00:23:00

If you think it’s pretty cool, you may be total wrong. But then maybe think about—have a think about then share with somebody whose view of the world, professionalism, you respect. And, you know, bounce it off a little, but it starts with—you know, it starts with yourself, with the smallest possible sample size, one person. That’s you. And I that’s what research is about—and then scaling it up from that. And you have to have the confidence to do that because a lot, you know, a lot of the time, you think, “Oh, God. Who am I? You know, I don’t really—I’m not an expert. I don’t understand this well enough.” But, you know, if you go with the evolutionary psychology or even biology, if I dare even say that, people survive. Sorry. People survive because of their reliance on instincts. And, of course, be aware of your biases. We’re all biased. Be aware of your sort of your bandwidth. Be aware of your ignorances. Great to do all of that. But listen to your own voice and then listen to other people’s voices in the very, very small, tight circle around you. You mentioned your wife. It’s a great place to start. It doesn’t have to be that but other people. And then you begin to sense of ‘is it just me’. You know, am I weird? The answer is probably yes, but maybe there are other weird people as well who make you feel less weird. And then the second person you meet who says, “Well, actually, I feel weird too.” Then you have your little crowd, you know, and you build from there. What’s that got to do with market research? I think because we’re very bad at it. We sort of, like, you know, are quite happy with being correct, precise, and analytical. And, you know, we’d like to think we’re, you know, almost university is where we should have been. But, actually, no, no, no, no, no. It’s about sort of, like, finding data driving imperial narratives that surprise people—that sort of say, “Oh, really? You think that?” Can you—you know what’s this based on? You know, what’s the strength of your story? But they have to want to listen to you because, ultimately, we’re competing with Netflix, you know. Will anybody listen to this if they can go immediately onto Netflix? Maybe not. So you got to even begin to do that. And, you know, not many of us look like Hollywood film stars, so we have to do it differently.

Lenny: 00:25:05

I love that perspective. It’s going to be interesting times as we go forward. But here is what I do know or at least I think I know. And, as usual, I think I’m right, whether I am or not. Time will tell. But the nature of work will change. The nature of our business structures will change. How we spend our times will change, the tasks that we perform. But, inherently, if you’re smart and open to new ideas and adaptable and authentic, then there’s going to be the opportunity to create value. And, if we create value, then we’ll make a living. And I think, especially somebody with a qualitative background, I think the future is fairly bright for qualitative researchers. Because they now finally have tools to have scale, but their skill sets are the glaring gap in this new paradigm that’s emerging. You know, the solutions don’t duplicate, so I think qualitative researchers are going to do great, though. What do you think about that?

Edward: 00:26:07

I think you’re right, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent seven or eight years with Happy Thinking People. But I think that there is still—there is way to go in really doing the basics on qualitative research, Lenny. I mean, it’s a sad thing to say. But, for many people, many clients out there, it’s still limited to a few tools. It’s still where it was 20 years ago. You know, because [unintelligible]. Nothing wrong with them. They’re still groups. There’s still in the—but, you know, it’s a lot more than that. And it’s been a lot more than that for quite a long time. And I think a lot of clients still struggle with ‘what do I do with qualitative research’. I think that there’s still a lot of misunderstanding out there. And you know Siamack Salari. I remember him saying—I don’t know, about a year ago, I think, when he was spending more and more time helping with his wife’s business, which I think was, maybe, a restaurant, which sounded really hard work, actually, but probably pretty cool if you enjoy chopping and—I don’t know. But he said, “Too many people still don’t understand what qualitative research is.” And I think that’s absolutely right. And I think we’ve done not a—and I still think that’s one of the areas I feel passionate about, to try to get the—in the chopping and changing world of client organizational structures to find the time do the—what I call ‘category education’. What is qualitative research? How do you use it? What are the tools? It’s basic stuff, but not enough people still get it. A lot of, you know—what percentage of qual—what percentage of qual spending is in Germany? I don’t know. Five percent of total spend, if that. Something like that. It’s tiny.

Lenny: 00:27:42

Wow. Really?

Edward: 00:27:43

It’s very small.

Lenny: 00:27:44

Not 20 percent like the global? It’s—

Edward: 00:27:46

No, no. Now, I may be wrong. I need to check, but it’s not much. It’s small. And you don’t have sort of—like, you don’t have a proper—in the UK, you do. You have the AQR. You have the wonderful QRCA lot in the US. But, outside of that, you know, who are the people doing this sort of fact, you know, the industry-style work about educating people? It’s just absent. And that’s because of the nature of the business. But, to your question, yes, I definitely agree. I think qualitative has, you know, a strong future, but it has to, yeah, continue working on, you know, the evolving, understanding what’s the difference between—you know, somebody to say ‘why do you say that’. You know, that is not the essence of qualitative research. That’s is closed ended—an open-ended question in quant research. And too many people say, “Well, oh. Really? So how do you get to end responses?” And they say, “Well, you’ve never heard of eye tracking.” All the stuff you think, “Well, of course, it’s not new.” Well, actually, I think the educational world is massive. And why is that? Because I think, you know, on the client side there is an awful lot of: A, new staff coming on the whole time, and B, an awful lot of staff. When I was at this conference in Berlin a few weeks ago, so many of the people on stage seemed to be marketing people, Lenny. And I thought, “Is this the future? You know, are all the clients going to be marking guys or women?” I’m not sure. But, you know, they’re not going to really spend a lot of time understanding about, I don’t know, basic protective techniques, semiotics. You know, so I think there’s a huge potential. But I think there’s still a way in terms of filling that potential, and there isn’t somebody with a deep pocket who is going to give you 3 million. If you’re in private equity, that’s nothing. I wonder how many qualitative agencies get financed by private equity. Not many, if any, you know. So it’s a question of who is going to finance the marketing. Who wants to spend—somebody who is doing good marketing role for a qualitative boutique in Berlin? Good question, huh?

Lenny: 00:29:46

Yeah. Well, the—

Edward: 00:29:47

There you go.

Lenny: 00:29:48

It’s—yeah. That does—that’s an interesting point that, you know, if we’re looking at platforms driving so much of the process and humans, an increasing—or, actually, a decreasing service element because the technology is getting better and better doing those things. And the human component is inherently consultative. There’s only room for so many McKinsey’s in the world, right? And that’s not even a great example because McKinsey sells products, you know. They sell IT. It’s not necessarily skills. They kind of position themselves that way. And no offense to any listeners from McKinsey. The brilliant people across the board. But, from a business standpoint, you know, it is a consultancy that sells products. And that can definitely be a challenge for individual consultants that are selling a skill, their brains more than anything else. And you’re right that private equity doesn’t invest in brains. So they invest in scalable products that can grow. And brains have built-in limitations.

Edward: 00:30:58

That’s right. And you have to be, you know, aware of the fact that people want to have—that’s what the task that you’re solving? It’s as simple as that. It’d be as simple as saying, “This solves that problem.” And you have to find a way, if you’re in qualitative research, to not end up sounding like, “This is Aire Fairy. We’re going to, you know, find the hypothesis, A, B, C.” You’ve got to [laugh] link up to a business reality. And I think that qualitative researchers may not appreciate that. But, again, you need bridge builders. You need the bridge to quant. It’s nothing new. But you got to make sure that it’s sort of like a—you know, again, a [unintelligible] and a smooth interface. And it’s sensitive. So the quant stuff—it’s not just clunky. It’s actually driven by what people really think, feel, and say. None of that’s new, but I think considering the voices needed to make these things not just exciting but relevant from a business point of view, they’re needed. And I think, you know, the QRCA does a great job in creating platforms. And I think the AQR does a great job as well. But, you know, I don’t think it’s easy on the financial side for these organizations to recruit people to finance events. Because, you know, if you’re looking at sponsors, they say, “Well, you know, where is the opportunity? What is the size of the opportunity?” It’s not like you’re going for a scalable product where you can say, “We have, you know, five key new tools. We can sell them across the globe.” No. You have things like culture, context, et cetera. So it’s more difficult. But I think the qual space, I hope, is something that will continue to thrive. And, you know, there are things that was, you know, near that like behavior economics and things which are, you know, nonverbal, complacent stuff, that kind of stuff. I really think we have a huge value. But it’s putting it all together. You know, you may not want to be a qual specialist. We say, well put it all together. You say, what is this telling me about? What’s the business problem? What is this telling me, and how can I make that sound current, quick, and inspiring in a way people actually want to listen to you? And, so often, you think, “Wow, this may be correct, but I find it so boring.” You know, that’s—a lot of people may not say it to your face, but they will just, you know, walk out. I mean, I’ve—one of the most embarrassing moments I’ve had is where people—I remember once at the IAX, just as a personal story, I [laugh] was on stage. And some people came in, and they sat down in the front row, and they looked up, and they saw I was on stage, and they walked out. And I thought, “Wow, they realized they were in the wrong room.” It happens. But it happens. And you think, “Fine.” You know, I don’t take it personally. Just carry on. Just carry on. And that’s when I—you know, look at my blog. And I say what—you know, why do I carry on in this? And people just say, “Carry on. Even if you can’t measure it, carry on. Just carry on.” So it’s like a religion, if you like. But it’s not always easy.

Lenny: 00:33:50

No. But it’s great advice. And, obviously, you’re doing that now. So let’s be conscious of your time as well as our listeners. You’ve launched on this new era in your life. You’re carrying on. What do you hope that’s going to look like?

Edward: 00:34:06

I hope I will help, on the client side, people turn something which is—they think is pretty good into something which is—makes insights even more inspiring by sharpening it, cutting it down, being critical from a narrative perspective and analytical. Because I trained in quant. But I’m not trying to say I’m, you know, I’m your best technical market researcher but somebody who can help you turn something which is good into something which is even better. So my personal sort of, like, preference is to try to make language sound convincing, logical, but occasionally throw into something which is memorable. And, on the agency side, on a very simple, simple front, you know, trying to find ways of getting management to take your report seriously, so looking at one pages. And I always used to hate doing those as a client because I would—once a project was done, I thought, “Oh, God. I have 20 one pages. Oh, that’s awesome.”

Lenny: 00:35:04

[laugh]

Edward: 00:35:05

You know, because I really didn’t want to go back in for stuff that, for me, was done and dusted—outsource it. Or, if you want to get onto a stage, get beyond the headline. Get into the actual presentation. Look at sort of like the—how writing a proposal, which is—sounds intelligent, sounds like you want to hear more. Use me to do that kind of stuff. And, on a more strategic level, be a sort of like a sparring partner for people who want to—if they feel they’re open enough to get any positioning advice on how their company is looking versus competition, whether it’s a good time to sell, get out of the business, or maybe develop something which is a little bit more differentiated or powerful or whatever. Yeah, so, on the strategic side, do something like that. And, finally, I guess that would be the notion of well, you know, the client sides have an interim vacancy where somebody is out for six months or nine months or however long then just sort of, like—you know, we live in a virtual world so to speak, so pick up the phone. And then I can maybe step in and then step back out again.

Lenny: 00:36:16

Okay. All that sounds great. Now, one last thing, though, that you’re hosting your blog on Substack, which I find Substack fascinating. I subscribe to many different folks. I think it’s the best collection of great thinking on the planet all in one place, great experts like you, expansive, diving deep or not, depending on the topic. But it’s just a fantastic resource and an interesting business model to take experts and find an opportunity to create income off of their IP, off of their expertise, in a very different way by sharing that. So any thoughts on that? Do you see a path of building a great Substack with, you know, thousands of subscribers paying 10 bucks a month and going that direction?

Edward: 00:37:10

Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, the thing is when people get to see you, hear your voice. So I think, I mean, that Substack—I read something earlier on today that they’re getting, you know, more into videos. I think that sort of, like, yes would be the answer to your question. But probably it would be over-hopeful to earn much money with just a blog, but it would have to be kind of like a series of—I don’t know, maybe if it’s only just four or five times a year but sort of, like, interactive videos, something like this, where people can see you. Because I think there’s no—well, obviously, there is a substitute for face-to-face, and we’re just doing it. But I think face-to-face is really still the best. So it’s something I’ve struggled with a little bit because I don’t like looking at myself on camera. I always feel a bit self-conscious and feel old fashioned and, you know, if you make notes of mistakes and I haven’t got a video editor and all that kind of stuff. But I think it’s something that’s held me back a little bit, but I’m going to have to do a lot more on this sort of—like more than a podcast but actually, actually, so, you know, small videos and looking at engaging people differently. And then I think I would charge for it. I’m not sure about the blog. Would you pay—well, would you pay for my blog? No, you’re not going to tell me truth here, now, but you probably wouldn’t, wouldn’t you?

Lenny: 00:38:28

[sigh]

Edward: 00:38:28

I don’t believe you would.

Lenny: 00:38:29

I would have to say, right now, no, only because there are so many that I subscribe to. I would go broke trying to do it. So I—and that’s an issue, right, with this. Substack, it’s great at promoting, “Oh, you like this? Check this out,” et cetera, et cetera. That’s why I subscribe to hundreds of them now. So that’s a—I think there’s a flaw in their business model from that standpoint of just economics of a subscriber. I have to be very, very, very picky because my wife gives me this much budget, right, to spend on those things.

Edward: 00:39:02

[laugh]

Lenny: 00:39:02

Um…

Edward: 00:39:03

Thinking about the Murphy retirement fund probably.

Lenny: 00:39:06

That’s exactly—well, and we still have kids at home and, you know, all of that good stuff. So, Edward, I think your voice is fantastic. I think that the perspective that you bring—and it’s why I wanted to have you as a guest—is an important one. And people need to keep hearing it from as many people as possible that carry, you know, credibility. And you absolutely have that.

Edward: 00:39:29

Thank you. My energy is still there. My belief in the industry is still there. And the fundamentals of me have not changed except, as I said earlier, and I think they’ve got a little more urgent. And I think the synthetic data will changes masses. And when you read small things that Jon Colston shares with the outside world, it sounds scary and, oh, Mark Ritson from the UK puts out there. And so it’s going to change, not just market research, it’s going to change masses. But then you move on to things which are going to be valued, but they’re going to be different. And I think research—you know, more and more companies will want to make data-based decisions. But they’re going to be doing them differently. And I think that will be—you know, [sigh], yeah, I think market research could be in a good place. And this is something we could have said five years ago as well if it sort of steps up differently to its true essence. And that’s not going to be about being expert on—terrible to say, but things like—Kathryn Korostoff is going to hate this—but questionnaire design and, you know, the panel structure. But they may disappear. They may not, Kathryn, if you’re listening to this. You know, maybe you’re going to be leading open-AI on this one, but it’s a danger. So I think it’s sort of the urgency of the change is—you know, it’s the urgency of life to quote—Morrissey is a UK singer from the ’80s, and he talked about that. And I think he’s spot on. The Smiths live in my head if not anywhere else on the planet.

Lenny: 00:41:06

[laugh] They are a favorite, actually. I’m quite proud that my 13-year-old and 14-year-olds actually can rattle off many Smiths songs and have them on rotation on their Spotify lists. So I…

Edward: 00:41:21

Is that right?

Lenny: 00:41:22

That’s right. I think I’ve done something right—

Edward: 00:41:24

Wow.

Lenny: 00:41:24

—as a dad. So…

Edward: 00:41:25

No, you’ve done lots right, Lenny.

Lenny: 00:41:27

Yeah. Edward, we can go on and on from there. I love the conversation. Congratulations on the new opportunity. And is there anything that you wanted to let our listeners know before we—well, where can they find you?

Edward: 00:41:40

They can find me by going onto LinkedIn, and they’ll see my contact details. And they can, you know, look at my blog, Research and Reflect, if they want to. And I even have a telephone number, but I’m not going to share with it—you online here. Otherwise, I’d get all sorts of unusual calls, which may be more interesting than I would like professionally, you know.

Lenny: 00:42:00

[laugh]

Edward: 00:42:01

So…

Lenny: 00:42:02

Smart man. Smart man.

Edward: 00:42:04

No, no, no, no. No, no, no. I wish I was smart. But, you know, we play with what we’ve got, right?

Lenny: 00:42:10

Yep.

Edward: 00:42:10

So the gray matter is still there. Lenny, it’s great to catch up. Thank you so much for your time. It’s great to talk, and I’d love to. And let’s make some time to, you know, continue the conversation, to use that great phrase.

Lenny: 00:42:20

Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, Edward. This has been great. I want to give a big shout out to our producer, Natalie; our editor, Big Bad Audio; and, of course, to you our listeners because Edward and I would still have time to talk, but it’s a lot more fun knowing that maybe other people are going to get value out of it as well. And that’s it for this edition of the Greenbook Podcast. Take care.