67 — MRX Pulse Check: Key Learnings from IIEX North America with Karen Lynch and Lenny Murphy

Lenny: 00:00:10

Hello, everybody. It’s Lenny Murphy. Welcome to another edition of the GreenBook Podcast. Thank you for taking time out of your day to spend it with us. And by us, as always, I do have a guest. And a little different strategy today. We have my co-host, Karen Lynch. Karen, how are you?

Karen: 00:00:30

I am so well, Lenny. Happy to be here with you in this moment, today, as usual [laugh].

Lenny: 00:00:36

And we don’t get to do this that often. So, it’s—you know, we’re usually kind of tag-teaming and going back and forth, and so I’m really looking forward to us talking together.

Karen: 00:02:20

Yeah, absolutely, Lenny, I’ll do that. And I also just want to add to what you were just saying about the ethnography of it all, as somebody who has, you know, leaned into ethnography and observational research for the entirety of my career to date, people-watching at IIEX North America is one of my favorite things to do. Just seeing what content is engaging them, for example, which stages or standing room only, where people are interacting with one another, and in what ways. Like, it’s really an exciting event to go to because it’s so immersive and experiential, and the people watching, man, there’s nothing like it.

Lenny: 00:04:49

And that seems to go right along with every conversation that we’re having with—you know, kind of wear my Gen2 hat for the moment, right, with brands and suppliers is that dichotomy, right, of process versus insights, right? And I think that’s where the technology, that transformation that we’re in, a transformation period of generative AI, of the process efficiencies, and they’re huge and wide-ranging and changing. So audience, anything we say today in, like, two months, it’s going to be different [laugh], so, at the rate of change that we are going through from that. But I love, love, love that through all of these conversations, even at IIEX, that we are getting back to that foundational component, which is what is the role of insights, and that is to understand people. And that understanding drives better business outcomes, hopefully. And I think it’s incredibly—as a qual researcher, do you detect this kind of golden age of qual emerging, this excitement that, you know, yes, yes?

Karen: 00:05:56

Well, you know, kind of a full disclosure, I have felt that qual has always been in, at least with my clients, the clients that I’ve had for years, has always been absolutely revered and respected. So, I never really had any issue personally with people not valuing it for the gold that it delivers. I think that it’s becoming really important right now, while we’re balancing this technology that we are learning to lean into, people really need to stay connected to human beings to balance the, kind of, anxiety that comes with reliance on machines and technology. So, I think it’s not necessarily a kind of a golden age or a renaissance per se, but it’s more of a, gosh I don’t know what the right word for it is, but something along the lines of it’s becoming elevated on the platform that it should have and be a bit more revered as remember why we’re here and why we’re doing this and what we need the AI to help us with. The AI is a tool, is a means to the end is, which is understanding that person.

Lenny: 00:07:03

Yeah. So, you mentioned Rob Volpe, which you know, if you’ve not listened to the podcast with Rob, you should it’s the only one that I’ve ever cried in—

Karen: 00:07:23

Yeah, you know, Liquid Death was really cool because it’s a great innovation story. And if you tie this into what I said in the beginning about my observational researcher, watching people experience a disruptive brand live on-site at IIEX was really cool. Many, many people that attended had their first taste of Liquid Death right there on the scene. And so, there were people saying, “Really? It’s water,” as they’re bringing the can to their mouth, they’re—you know, like, “Really, this is water?”

Lenny: 00:11:21

Very cool. Now, speaking of people, right, obviously at IIEX, we do a lot of interesting things. We have the competition this time, our Future List honorees, which are—well, I was going to say young, but that’s not necessarily the case, but the rising stars—

Karen: 00:11:42

First of all, there’s so many. And we had not only do we have a Future List on every track, but we also had Future List honorees, kind of, peppered throughout as well because so many of them were able to come and speak at North America. And that’s one of the, for those of you who are listening, one of the perks, if you will, of becoming an honoree is that you get a speaking spot at one of our events. So, many of them were able to come to North America. I would say, you know, Ben Lundin talked about leadership and research in general, but just, you know, kind of elevating your own, again, thought leadership or leadership in general with other teams, Erin Sowell talked about marketing ecology, which was, you know, quite unique.

Lenny: 00:12:54

Yeah, absolutely. Anything else that stood out before we go back into the other topic of AI, right? Any other standouts for you?

Karen: 00:13:04

Gosh, I mean, I think those are really the big ones. I know that we had, you know, there’s—we always have a track, sort of, about either insights marketing, or I think this year was labeled, “Growing Your Insights Business,” and I think what was really neat over there was a lot of people talking about what they could do to grow their own careers and develop their, you know, personal brands or make sure that they’re clear on who they are and what they’re projecting out into the world, whether it’s a small business or a consultancy or a midsize business. I think that that stage, this event offered a lot of kind of professional development in a different way. It had a slightly unique twist on it this year, so I really appreciated that. And I mean, I think the podcast age… so first of all, for me, I had a first on our podcast recording, which was we interviewed Sarah from Red Bull and I actually tasted my first Red Bull live on air and [laugh]—

Lenny: 00:14:33

Oh. Yeah, so the competition we came up—actually before we even launched IIEX, the first Insight Innovation Competition was a virtual event before we—you know, it was a glimmer in our eye to launch a live event series. And it was to showcase early-stage companies that were, you know, entering the market, kind of a Shark Tank type of situation. So, it’s been something near and dear to my heart. It’s built into the DNA of the events to create a process to identify early-stage companies, give them a stage, have some structure around voting from people who are familiar with these things, and give some guidance to the companies.

Karen: 00:17:32

Yeah well, it was really exciting to watch the five, kind of, five-minute pitches. And you know, we have a team of judges. Just again, for the audience’s sake, who don’t necessarily know the process, but they are judged by people outside of GreenBook who do the first round of judging to come up with the five finalists, and then we do on-site, kind of, crowdsource voting of people that are in attendance watching the pitches, and then they vote. And to see the five pitches, I was sitting there thinking, “They’re all excellent. These are five very good companies with really good products.”

Lenny: 00:18:28

Yeah, it’s probably the—I’m always bummed to miss one of our events, but that specifically is one of the things that I’m most bummed about missing. So.

Karen: 00:18:37

Yeah. Well, and then, of course, Andi was on a podcast also. So, we keep referring back to some of—there’s some ways for you to learn a little bit more. Andi at Riviter, there’s a podcast episode that she was on also. She was in our ecosystem before she had applied. So, if you’re curious about her company, you can hear more by tuning into that podcast.

Lenny: 00:19:00

We’re doing a good job of plugging our past podcasts.

Karen: 00:19:04

We are. There’s so much to plug. I’m like, the Red—

Lenny: 00:19:20

Yes. One day sponsored by Red Bull?

Karen: 00:19:23

Well, you don’t even know. Sarah and I, we talked, me in that Red Bull team, so we’ll see what happens [laugh].

Lenny: 00:19:44

Oh, IIEX on Red Bull. I don’t know [laugh].

Karen: 00:20:22

Yeah—

Lenny: 00:22:44

Oh, absolutely. I mean, let’s be clear, right? I mean, it’s supply and demand. So, when clients demand it, then partners, if they want to survive, then step up to deliver it [laugh], right? I mean, it’s just basic economics and the supplier ecosystem, that is its job is to innovate on behalf of brands and to bring those solutions to market.

Karen: 00:25:18

Well, and what I love about that is, you know, when you are setting out to do some interviews and you need to—you know, you have your question guide and then you ask a question and it doesn’t get the answer that… not that you were hoping for or looking for, but that gives you the insight. You’re like, “Mmm, that question wasn’t the right question.” So, you have to do a lot of improv on the spot to say, how might I ask this question differently? A point in case is if anybody listening has ever done research with children and you have a question that you think a child will be able to an—an open-ended question, you’re pretty sure it’s the right one. And then you ask this, you know, child the question and they just kind of Blink and look at you and it’s like, “Nope, we must reword these questions for children.” A different audience member needs a different question.

Lenny: 00:26:42

Yeah. It’s exciting times, right? Now again, this conversation I was having this morning was around the idea of virtual respondents. And I think we’re there. Now, does that—[everybody 00:26:57] listening—does that—I do not think that that is going to replace the bulk of market research, right, because we still need to validate and ask questions. But are there types of research done today that I can see the virtual respondent model being deployed to? Yep.

Karen: 00:27:14

Yeah. And I think it’s really interesting. If you have a clear set of personas that are in your user base or your customer base, and the intelligence just trained to really know that persona, I don’t see why they couldn’t. I think that validation work is the key that you just mentioned. The key is going to be, is this accurate? Does this resonate? Does this land? Has this changed? As people change, then there’s going to be this continual need to update what the system knows about those people.

Lenny: 00:28:19

Yeah. Now, it’s time for another plug.

Karen: 00:29:33

No, I mean, absolutely. Because I think that we’re still under—we’ and by we at this point, I mean, we [laugh] we the human beings who are taking all of this in and certainly the professionals that are trying to discern in our minds what it means for us. We still have a lot to learn—unless you grew up and were educated with that kind of coding high-tech background, a lot of researchers have many of those skills, but not necessarily to the extent that an engineer might have or a computer science major might have, for example—unless you were that, you have a lot to learn. So, we all really need to expedite our education in this, and that’s what we’re feeling. It would be, I think, akin to somebody saying, like, “Hey, can you teach Spanish to this group of 10th graders?” And you’ve never spoken a word of it your life. Not only do you have to learn the language, but you also maybe have to learn, wait, what does a 10th grader even like? How do I teach?

Lenny: 00:31:07

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, gosh, I spend probably an hour a day just, you know, reading, listening to other things on this topic, just to try and stay—and tomorrow, it’ll be different than what I read today. So, all right. Want to be conscious of your time as well as the time for our listeners. So, any other key takeaways, anything else that you want to share on, if there was one learning you thought, “This is it,” from the event?

“Data-Inspired Innovation:: 00:31:37

Strategies for Product Excellence,” and we had somebody from Merck step in, somebody from McDonald’s, somebody from P&G, Roben Allong facilitated the discussion. And it’s the idea of using data to drive innovation. And often that involves a tech partner, right?

Lenny: 00:32:40

That’s great. All right, anything—since we two are together, I know we’re working on some cool stuff coming down the pike. Anything you want to give anybody a sneak peek of or kind of a watch out for some interesting stuff.

Karen: 00:32:55

So, we’ve talked about IIEX—right—AI, so that event will be coming up in September. We will have our Health event coming up where we’re talking a lot about—speaking of data-driven, right—but data-driven patient experience and keeping patients central to all that’s happening in healthcare and pharma and the larger healthcare ecosystem, that event is coming up. Let’s also plug Behavior because we’ll be doing that event again. It might look a little different this year, but that’s coming soon as well. And you know, there was a great track on behavior at North America as well, so we know that that is still important. As you know, also, from some of the work that you’re doing at Gen2, if you want to kind of echo what I’m saying there, I’m sure it’s a great time for it.

Lenny: 00:33:36

Yeah. No, absolutely. And it goes back to what we’re talking about, right? The—in general, the technology will enhance our ability to collect this information that is uniquely about why, right? It is human-centric at [laugh] its core, so I think it’s a great time for that as well. And without giving too much—yeah, okay. I’m getting a thumbs-up.

Karen: 00:34:38

Hilarious.

Lenny: 00:34:43

Maybe that’s the next iteration. Not just this kind of, you know, webcast, but there we go. And then we get Red Bull to sponsor.

Karen: 00:35:00

No. I mean, I just think, you know, it goes without saying that I know listeners are making sense of this AI thing, and I don’t want it to seem like Lenny and I are saying, “Yes, it’s important. Yes, it’s coming. Is it gloom and doom?” Like, I know, it’s an uncomfortable space people are in and I just want to acknowledge how people are feeling.

Lenny: 00:36:02

All right. That’s it. Thank you so much. Thanks to Natalie, our producer; James, our editor; and you, our listeners. We appreciate it and we’ll talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.