Insights on the Brink

Confessions of a Marketer

Mark Reed-Edwards: I'm Mark Reed Edwards. Welcome back to Confessions of a Marketer. Today, I'm joined by Tim Hoskins and Brett Townsend of Quester, an insights and strategy company that specializes in human conversation. They've just released a new book called Insights on the Brink: Revitalizing the Market Research and Analytics Industry. As someone who has worked in and around analysts and market research for a long time, it's a subject near and dear to me. Tim and Brett, it's great to have you here.

Brett Townsend: Thanks, Mark.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Can you share your backgrounds and how you both ended up at Questor? Tim, maybe we can start with you.

Tim Hoskins: I came from the information security space and worked at a startup for several years and then made the jump over to quest or to lead their sales and marketing and about four years into the job, I was grateful to be promoted to president and then acquired the company in 2022.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Brett?

Brett Townsend: Yeah, I started my career on the agency side and then spent 15 years in corporate insights where I was a client of Quester's for 10 to 12 years, going back to my early days at PepsiCo and Tim and I became good friends over the years of being a client together and always kind of had this conversation, this ongoing conversation, about if I ever wanted to leave corporate, how it would be great to work together.

And so we made that happen about two years ago.

Mark Reed-Edwards: So, Brett, can you tell me, exactly what Quester does?

Brett Townsend: Well, I think we both could definitely take this one, but we are a branding and innovation strategy consulting firm where we work with a number of clients on: How do they build their brands? How do they innovate, properly, more effectively? And we really focus on consumer narratives and what are those stories behind the research that are really driving decision making?

And then we layer that in with a number of different things. So it's a very holistic consulting type of view where insights are the backbone of what we do, but we're not a full service agency, so to speak . Insights gives us the tools to help consult our clients on a number of different things, whether it's jobs to be done, demand space work or whatever. But at the heart of it all are these consumer narratives and really helping people tell better brand stories and, and create very meaningful, long lasting innovation.

Mark Reed-Edwards: So has it been the dream come true that you thought, leaving corporate life and working at Quester?

Brett Townsend: It really has been, you know, I mean, it's been fun to work together with Tim finally, after talking about it all these years and just being back on the agency side, after being on the corporate side for so long, I really have a lot of empathy for what our clients go through and what they face. And so it's really led to great, meaningful conversations where we're really able to help our clients in a way that's very beneficial to them.

Mark Reed-Edwards: So Tim, I'd like to ask you about this book that just came out. What prompted you to write it?

Tim Hoskins: Well, it all goes back to just a number of conversations that Brett and I had had through the years about the industry and the state of the industry and where it needs to go. And I've had the fortunate opportunity to be a co chair of the Insights Association's largest conference, the Corporate Researchers Conference.

And one day I called Brett and I said, "Hey, you should be a keynote and take all of the things that you believe in your heart and that we've talked about and get up on stage in front of hundreds of people and just kind of have a drop the mic moment." And so that's where it started. And I think that Brett received a lot of accolades and feedback.

And it was some of those attendees in the room who said, "you should put this into a book."

And when he joined Questor, he started talking to me about it and I said, Why not? Let's do it. And about halfway through the writing process, Brett called me up and he said, "Hey, I'd love for us to write this together." And to not only bring together his client side experience, but also my agency experience.

And so he wrote the first draft and we sat in a room for three straight days with a colleague of ours and we went back and forth and rewriting and the final version is definitely a labor of love and something that we're proud of, but our real goal is, is to just spark conversation.

Not everyone might agree with everything that we've written, and that's okay. The purpose is to spark the conversation, and to potentially create behavior change so that we can revitalize our industry.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Yeah, I want to talk about the book a bit and maybe we can, you know, kind of tear it apart in a moment, but Brett, I'm wondering what you learned in drafting this book that maybe you didn't expect.

Brett Townsend: Wow. That's a good question. Wow. The reason why I'm hesitating is because I think it turned out mostly the way I expected it would. As Tim was saying, this is something that's been kind of an ongoing decade long conversation that the two of us have been having and just things that we have both experienced through the corporate side or the client side.

Conversations that we've had with others, just observations we've made, you know, both Tim and I served on the, the board of directors for the Insights Association. So it gives us a lot of visibility to the industry as a whole. And so the book really is just a compilation of each of our over 20 years experience in the industry and things that we've done.

The only thing that might have been a little different than what we set out doing at the very beginning was maybe some of the structure, areas where we emphasized or de-emphasized. In fact, the chapter on human emotion looks very different than the original version that we wrote because as Tim said, as we were locked in that room together, we realized that we needed to take another direction with it.

And so we did that. And so with few exceptions, it's turned out the way that I thought it would.

Mark Reed-Edwards: So let's talk about the book and maybe Tim, you can start. Can you tell me how it's organized, what a reader is going to get out of it and maybe some of the highlights of the book. .

Tim Hoskins: The first chapter, the intro, is really just a historical, kind of how did we get to where we are and really setting the context and some of the challenges that we face within the industry. But the rest of the book is meant to be inspirational and also provide very specific tactics and strategies to implement everything from what Brett was talking about: emotion to storytelling, to influence.

The intent and the goal is for a reader to walk away and have practical ways to apply this in their day to day lives-- how to ultimately drive top and bottom line growth for their organization. And then the last chapter is one that I'm incredibly proud of. It's something that Brett really took the focus on writing, and that is a call to action for senior executives in these large organizations, because ultimately the senior executives set the culture.

The culture of how we view empathy, how we view consumer behavior, and whether or not we choose to listen and be humble to what consumers are providing as feedback, or to say that we know better. We hear this consumer centricity a lot as a buzzword within a lot of different publications.

But are we really living it? And it's really a call to action for senior executives to not only say it, but live it and to support it throughout the organization.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Brett, you and I were chatting before we started recording and we were talking about market research and the way it's sometimes just dumped on people's laps, right, in a presentation. So, following on what Tim was saying, how do you present data? How do you present insights to an executive in a way that they will then understand what the next step should be or present it in a way that is just clear. Sometimes it's just data, it's charts, and there's no conclusion. How do you present that conclusion?

Brett Townsend: Well, the easy answer is that I don't present data in the traditional sense. You know, our brains are not wired to remember numbers, but we are wired to remember stories. And usually when I am meeting with a CEO or senior executives in my career, I've had maybe 30 minutes, sometimes longer, but a lot of times I have 30 minutes to go in there.

So I'm not going in there talking about methodology. I'm not showing a bunch of numbers. I'm getting to the point. And I think one of the things that we have in the book is a saying that I've used a lot. It's: "I don't need to know everything, I just need to know what I need to know."

That's what I would tell the agencies when I was their client. But then the same goes true as I go up the ladder. And so, you know, my CMO doesn't need to know as much as I know.

The CEO doesn't need to know as much as I know. They just need to know what are the insights, what is the conflict we're trying to overcome and what am I recommending to go do it? And it's really that simple. And I do it in the form of compelling stories that they can relate to where they feel empathy for the consumer. And then always a call to action or something that can go be acted upon .

At the end of the day, we can give great insight and tell a great story, but if there's no call to action or direction at the end, then it's just story time at the library. So we have to really make sure that we're telling these senior executives what we feel they should go do, because they want to hear that from us.

You know, they want outcomes. They want direction. Now it's up to them whether they choose to follow it. And that's happened sometimes where they don't. But when I go in there with a concise story, clear insights and a clear direction on what to go do, they love it and appreciate it. And most of the time they agree.

And then we go forward from there.

Mark Reed-Edwards: So my next question kind of rises out of that: Why does the industry need to be revitalized? Tim, maybe you can start and then Brett, maybe you can follow up.

Tim Hoskins: Brett gave this great quote in the book that I wholeheartedly agree with. And that is, is that every department within an organization should want to work with insights. Theoretically, we should have no natural predators and provide a level of depth and nuance about consumer behavior and understanding that they should be clamoring over.

And yet that's not the case in all organizations and in many organizations. And that is the real challenge. And we actually control our ability to turn that around. And that's part of the reason why we think it needs to be revitalized. I think that you can look at other stats and figures in terms of marketing and messaging campaigns that don't resonate, innovations that fall flat.

Perhaps that's because we didn't have a visceral and empathetic understanding of the consumer's circumstance: their needs, their wants, their desires, and their emotions.

Brett Townsend: And then, I'll piggyback on that. The revitalization also comes with this mindset change where we have to realize that we are not clinicians and academics. Our job is not to conduct methodologies. This revitalization would take place as an evolution to understand that, A lot of the techniques and things that we use now were developed by people who did not work in business, who were not responsible for business results, who weren't held responsible if something didn't work because they weren't in charge of developing a product or increasing sales.

We are in a very disruptive environment with mergers and acquisitions and new players coming into the market. And the barriers of entry have been practically removed from most categories. And there's so much going on now that we have very specific demands from our employers and from senior leaders that desperately want things from us that as an industry, historically, we've not consistently given them.

And so this revitalization is this understanding of who we are, the power we have, and how we need to go about doing our jobs in the most effective way possible.

Mark Reed-Edwards: You used the word "empathy" quite a bit. And I think it's an interesting word to use in a world dominated by data points. That those data points actually represent human beings. Right? And injecting empathy into the way in which we examine that is really key because you know, people do make brand decisions for visceral reasons.
They have a love for a brand like Apple or Amazon or, you know, whatever it is. And that's why they make those decisions and that doesn't necessarily show up in data points.

Tim Hoskins: Absolutely. And we know, based on neuroscience work, that emotion drives a majority of the decisions that we make--whether conscious or, or unconscious--on a daily basis. But yet I don't believe that we're always taking that into context. When we're viewing decisions and specifically data. We love data.

The fact that the data analytics world has become so important within organizations and, is, is in many ways been democratized, is phenomenal for our industry and for organizations. But the difference is that you can't just stop at that data. You have to be able to understand the "why." Some of the best companies that we work with leverage the power of the data analytics and they marry it with the empathy and the "why" from consumers to help build their strategies.

And it's the one-plus-one that equals three. And right now we see a lot of companies, it's either one or the other. Rarely are we seeing where it's a complete mix and compimentary.

Mark Reed-Edwards: That's fascinating. So, let's maybe get to the payoff for all this. How can brands most effectively use analytics and market research to further their cause? Brett, maybe we can start with you.

Brett Townsend: Well, starting with what Tim said, don't make it an either or proposition. We need data and we need historical data and we need predictive data. But to your earlier point, there is no empathy in data. There is no emotion in data. And it is up to us on the market research side to marry the historical and predictive analytics with this empathetic storytelling that captures the emotion that the consumer is facing. Mark, it's not an issue of choosing to go data or consumer insights. You know, we hear there's a lot of companies that say we need to be more data driven, and usually that means, oh, we got to. Do more analytics and we're going to kind of get rid of traditional consumer insights and really what that's supposed to mean is that we stop making gut decisions.

We stop listening to the loudest voice in the room or the senior most person in the room just because we're deferring to him or her. We need to make decisions that are consumer centric decisions. And you know, in great qualitative can be data. And so I think that's kind of understanding what that term "being data driven" really means.

It doesn't mean just be numbers. But then it's also taking the responsibility of being consumer centric out of only being consumer insights' responsibility. Make it the responsibility of the whole organization. I mean, this is something Jeff Bezos said: this customer obsession that Amazon started with and still has. It's everybody's responsibility.

And in most companies, it's really only the responsibility of consumer insights, and to a lesser extent marketing. But I think the more marketing can work with consumer insights and take on that responsibility of consumer centricity, then you really start to see magic happen. And that's when you start to see very meaningful stories coming out of marketing where the consumer conflict is not only addressed, but resolved in the way that that brand is helping the hero or the heroine of the story, overcome their conflict.

And it leads to great innovation. It leads to great relationships with retailers because you're selling in stories that are going to help sell things in those retailers. It's this big ecosystem of consumer centricity that when everybody's pitching in and everybody takes it as their responsibility, it works so well.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Yeah, consumer centric rather than data centric.

Brett Townsend: Or product centric.

You're right. It's both. It's both. It's not being data centric or product centric, but being consumer centric, because then you're not worried about numbers or you're not worried about products. You're worried about solutions. Like if you really have empathy for you know, a low income consumer who has to decide whether or not to pay the electric bill or buy food for their family, then you really start to decide, okay, it's not that they need a product.

We need to come up with a solution to help them. And it's, that's that kind of feeling that we need to have.

Tim Hoskins: You know, one of the most popular things that we talk about with our clients-- and it usually happens at the front end of an initiative and then right before we're actually getting ready to take them through the story-- we sit down with everyone in the room and we talk about the power of narratives.

And narratives are formed and drive consumer behavior. But narratives are formed through stories. They're stories that we listen to every day or allow ourselves to listen to. They're stories that we seek out. They're stories that we actually tell others. Those stories at mass, create narratives that explain behavior.

But what's really important is, is that stories and narratives can be true or false, fact or fiction. But that doesn't matter. It's all about the context of how the consumer got there themselves or with others. And if we look at data, we look at insights, and we look at stories, we have to be able to do so in a way to where we see them as sacred, right?

Whether we agree with them or not, it's not to walk in and look at it and poke holes in it. It's this deep seeking to understand. And, you know, when we set the context in our presentations, it's a very interesting moment where, when somebody starts to ask a question or they start to think through things, once they've shifted their mindset into the power of narratives, then they start to look at the information from a whole different perspective. It's a challenge. It's not easy, right? Because we all have our biases and we bring them with us every day, but we have to leave those at the door and really be open minded to understand people as people.

Mark Reed-Edwards: People are people. It's a good thing to keep in mind as we stare at our computer screens all day long. Thanks for joining me for this great discussion, Brett and Tim. I really appreciate it. I'm assuming people can get "Insights on the Brink" on Amazon or any of the other online sources.

Brett Townsend: Yep, just go to Amazon and do a search for "Insights on the Brink" and you'll find it there, available both ebook and paperback. And we also have a link on our website at quester. com as well.

Mark Reed-Edwards: Awesome. Thanks, guys. We'll see you on the next Confessions of a Marketer.

Links:

• Insight on the Brink page on Quester's website
• Insights on the Brink purchase link on Amazon