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In this episode of The Curiosity Current: A Market Research Podcast, host Stephanie and Matt are joined by Tina Tonielli, North America Lead for Consumer and Business Insights at Haleon, a global leader in consumer health, specializing in innovative solutions that prioritize everyday well-being. Tina discusses her journey from brand management to market research, blending curiosity and business acumen to transform consumer insights into impactful business strategies. Tina shares her expertise in integrating consumer insights into business strategy, fostering inclusivity in market research, and leveraging generative AI for transformative change. This episode is a must-listen for an inspiring discussion for professionals looking to deepen their understanding of impactful market research and strategic decision-making.
Tina Tonielli is a visionary leader in the world of insights and analytics in the consumer health space. With a background in brand management and market research, Tina has spent her career bridging the gap between data and strategic decision-making. As the North American lead for Consumer and Business Insights at Haleon, she has championed initiatives around inclusive marketing, leveraging AI-driven innovation, and transforming insights teams into strategic partners. Tina is passionate about using data for good, helping consumers improve their health and well-being while driving business success.
Transcript
Stephanie Vance: Today, we're thrilled to be joined by Tina Tonielli, a visionary leader in the world of insights and analytics in the consumer health space. As the North America lead for consumer and business insights at Haleon, Tina has been instrumental in shaping how Haleon thinks about such things as inclusive marketing, centering Consumer Insights in the business decision-making process, and leveraging generative AI to drive transformative change.
Matt Mahan: We'll explore Tina's strategies for reaching underserved audiences, transforming insights teams into dynamic strategic partners, and the timeless value of getting deep into the data. This is a conversation packed with insights for anyone looking to stay ahead in an evolving industry, and we're looking forward to getting started. So with that,Tina, welcome.
Tina Tonielli: Thank you so much, guys, and thank you for the introduction. I'm blushing a little bit over here, so thank you very much. And all of those topics are ones that I feel very passionately about, so looking forward to this conversation very much.
Stephanie: We do, too. It'll be a fun one. To kick us off, because we always like to ask a question to help us understand how you got to where you are now. So like we talked about, you've been a champion of some of the most impactful initiatives that are in Consumer Insights right now. I think from fostering inclusivity and research to adopting AI-driven innovation. And then, like I said before, centering really the role of insights and decision-making. Before we dive into all that, the million-dollar question, can you tell us a little bit about how you got into market research? Your journey sort of through the industry and how your approach maybe has changed over time.
Tina: Sure. I will tell you the Tina Tonielli journey, as exciting as it is, I guess. So I started actually in brand management. So I started in marketing. That's where I started. And I joke with people that I'm kind of a marketer at heart, which I actually think helps a lot in market research, but a lot. So I started in marketing and I spent five years in brand management. And I learned a lot, about how to run a business, how to connect with stakeholders, business document, like all of that stuff. I spent a lot of time there. But the time that I loved was the time I spent digging into the data, seeking new data. I loved the crosstab. I'm dating myself. But like the crosstabs in a segmentation study that we did on sleep, like I spent time there. And I just loved having conversations with the gentleman who was leading our market research department. And so for me, honestly, I am a curious person by nature and I love to grow and learn. And I was like, I think if I go work with that guy, I'm going to learn so much. So I moved over into the market research department, which was in the process of being rebranded as Insights, which I have to say also attracted me. And I worked with people who I learned a ton from, which was amazing. And I also realized that I had something a little unique to offer in that space, which was having that business background and knowledge that I had, when I'm looking to influence stakeholders, a lot of times I could influence them even better because I had sat in their shoes. So I would be saying to them, I understand when I tell you that this ad is not what you want, that it's okay. And let's work together to try to figure out how to still hit your growth goals. So sort of operating in that way of being business-minded, but insights curious and sort of bringing those two pieces together, I think is sort of what has made me special. And I've worked in consumer healthcare or healthcare, my whole career, I'm very much about understanding people and what makes them tick. But I feel like that needs to be used for the power of good, because ultimately what you could be doing is forcing people to make bad decisions. And for me, looking in healthcare and the opportunities that we have, I like to think about it in terms of understanding people's needs when it comes to their health and well-being and helping them to achieve those needs better through products and services. So if I'm doing that, then I feel like I can sleep at night with doing the work that I do. And so when I look at how it's changed over time, what's interesting is I'm always still curious about people. That's kind of what drives me is curiosity and understanding people. When I started out in research, it was understanding consumers and understanding consumers of like an individual category and getting to know them really, really well. And my aperture really has just grown into like really thinking about people as people. And I think the other piece of it is taking that curiosity that I have about people that we serve and applying it to the stakeholders who we influence, because I think the more that you grow in your insights career, the importance of influencing stakeholders and partnering with stakeholders, you almost have to look at them as consumers too and what makes them tick so you can help them do their job better. So that's probably what's changed the most as I've sort of gone through my career.
Stephanie: That's excellent. I love that so much. Okay, so switching gears just a little bit. I think Matt and I are both really interested in talking to you about inclusive market research and focusing on underserved audiences. And sort of the way that we're thinking about it is that it feels like to us that it's no longer a nice to have, but more like a necessity for staying competitive. And we were thinking about it in the context of the foresight work that you do too. And thinking about what the market's going to look like in 15 years or 20 years. And we know it's going to look so different. Do you have any recommendations? Or frameworks that insights leaders might consider for identifying and engaging with underserved audiences in a way that feels authentic both to their brand or your brand and to the audience?
Tina: Yeah, that's a really great question, Stephanie, and one I feel very passionately about. So let's talk about it. Back in COVID time when everybody was spending a lot of time at home and really doing a lot of self-reflection, I did a lot of that myself. And over the years, I've always worked in insights, but I've always heard people talk about, you know, we're going to do something targeted to these communities or this group or that group. And I thought to myself, we should be amplifying the voices of people that aren't being heard, but we shouldn't assume that we know who's not being heard. And I think there's a lot of times where people make that assumption. So what I wanted to do was try to approach it really simply and say, okay, who are the people who are feeling like they're being left behind? So I went and pulled some pretty big macro information about looking at 30 different groups of people, veterans, single moms, and you name it, I had it in there. And who were the people who over-indexed on feeling like brands didn't understand them, didn't respect them, feel like they were part of it? And so I looked and I identified those groups and I said, okay, who over-indexes on that, right? And then I pulled those groups together. So that's the first question to me is challenging your assumptions about who's underserved. And then the second piece that I did was, prioritization, which is always the challenge, right? It's always, oh, how are we going to prioritize? So what I did was I looked at those groups against some criteria for our company. So do they have the needs that we serve? What do they over-index in arthritis, as an example? What is the size of their population? So how many people can we actually help? And then looked at things like how well are we meeting their needs today versus how well is the category meeting their needs? So we have a gap maybe in terms of meeting their needs best. So if you look at those three things and say, let's look at the number of people, the relevance to us, and sort of how well we're doing today, we pulled together a score and we prioritized them. And it was really fascinating stuff because everybody aligns to the criteria and then you see the results and it's like, oh, wow, I didn't think it was going to be that. But use that as a really good lighthouse and anchor for people to say, let's make sure that these groups in particular, especially like our top five, are always counted in our sample. And we can always look at them and understand their perspective.
Stephanie: It's so interesting because the way you describe it, it makes me sort of realize and gut check this for me, that it's a pretty personal exercise for the brand, that it's not going to be the same cookie cutter set of people who feel underserved.
Tina: So Stephanie, I think the more that you can be personal to where you can make a difference and where you uniquely can make a difference, then to me, you're both effective, but then you're also authentic. Because you can make a difference and that difference feels like it's connected to what makes you special as a brand or special as a company. And so for us, that really has helped us to say, okay, these are the people that need our help the most, where we can help them the most. And then how do we think about understanding them? And first of all, just including them in our samples and making sure that we have an included sample. Like, honestly, it starts there and it's as simple as that.
Matt: That's so cool. One of the things that struck me as you were working through that answer was your business perspective showing through in the way you approach that problem. Going back to your answer to the first question, being a researcher myself, obviously my inclination is, oh, there's a problem. Let's do a survey. Let's do a focus group. Let's do research. But I think, you know, something that really came through in your approach there was, okay, first acknowledge that when you're trying to understand your blind spots, it's a blind spot, which I think is such an important first step that is so easy to overlook. And then understand how, as a business, the products and services that you actually offer address the needs because there are going to be people that you probably want to help, but that you can't because it's just not what Haleon does in your case, right?
Tina: Yeah.
Matt: It's a really interesting perspective. We did a little bit of pre-research. You're no stranger to the podcast circuit. Your thoughts and work pieces are out there in the public sphere and they kind of speak for themselves. You have mentioned cultural fluency audits, and we were both really interested to get into that. So when you're conducting these audits, what are the most common gaps that organizations are likely to uncover? You know, what are the problems that they're likely to discover when they do one of these audits?
Tina - 00:10:55:
Yeah. So I think the number one thing is overestimating themselves. So a lot of people come in and they're like, oh, we totally know this group. You know, we'll think about these different groups and we're like, we know all about, we have tons of Consumer Insights about that. And then it'll be like, do you understand where they shop? Do you understand what their undermet needs are? Do you understand why they're not using you at the same level as your competition today? And people will be like, dang, those are actually the most important questions. So I think for us, as we looked at the cultural fluency audit, there was a couple of things. We looked at it from a research perspective, but also from a marketing strategy perspective and sort of executional perspective. And then also from like an innovation perspective. So looking at all those pieces, there are actually three different groups within the company that we were sort of tapping into. But we were saying, if you really want to be culturally fluent, you need to understand the people. You need to make sure that you're building marketing that is authentic, and good for them. And then you're also in your pipeline for the future. You're making sure that their voices are heard and informing your sort of guidance for the future. And I will say it's much easier said than done. It is a comprehensive journey is what I like to say. We're on a journey and it's progress over perfection. So we haven't always gotten it perfect and we've continued to optimize as we go. But to me, waiting for perfection is not the reason not to do something. It's better to do something and move forward than sit and wait till you have it perfect.
Stephanie: 100%. Switching gears a little bit, and this is a topic that Matt and I both spend a lot of time thinking about this topic. So I'm going to keep asking your advice. Sorry. Anywhere where I know you're like thinking and doing work, I'm just so interested to hear your perspective. But it does seem like a lot of your career has been oriented towards elevating the role of Consumer Insights within organizations. And the way that Matt and I kind of come at this is as a supplier side company, but a lot of our clients are struggling through this process. And we have both the privilege and the, you know, the sort of daunting task of being on that journey with them and supporting that journey. And it is not easy at a lot of organizations. It can be a really like, it's a huge transition to make. And I was curious, what advice do you have for insights leaders who are really looking to elevate and transform the role of insights from like reactive order takers to strategic proactive business partners?
Tina: So I think the first thing is mindset. So I would say it starts with a mindset shift for some people. Some people, they have this naturally, but in my experience in a variety of different organizations, this isn't the standard mindset for a market researcher. And that mindset is what is the business impact that you are driving with this question? And I can't even tell you the transformation that that alone has with people, because then you start going, oh, okay. When you come to me and ask me, marketers sometimes will come ask curiosity questions. I'm sorry, you guys get them too. Like they just want to know, like, and I'm curious too. So I, sometimes we get suckered into it and we just go do it because we're just so curious ourselves. But what in this day and age of limited resources, I think it's so incredibly important to ask that question. Where is that question coming from? What is that answer going to be used for in terms of driving business impact? And if you don't have a good answer for it, then ultimately you probably shouldn't be doing it, where you certainly should ask a lot more questions before you execute it. And I find that it's almost like you don't have to go from reactive to proactive. I think proactive is like the silver bullet, the unicorn, fill in the blank. But if you look at it as that, proactive is so hard when you have limited resources, but going from reactive order taker to strategic impact partner, that to me is what's actually achievable for people. So instead of I take those questions and go, okay, yes, they're maybe not proactive, but you've cut our budget. You've cut our people. It's really hard to have the time to be proactive, but it doesn't take any time at all to have business impact and really be able to quantify that and talk about it.
Matt: That's great input. You have also said, like I said, Stephanie, we got all your quotes here. Going back to your answer though, you have said you're not done as a researcher until the business impact happens, which both Stephanie and I found just really had a lot of resonance. So what specific steps can an insights team take to make that jump? How do they ensure that their research findings actually translate into a tangible business outcome for lack of a better term? I know that you only control so much from the insights department, but how do you maximize your chances of your findings not just winding up on a PowerPoint report that ends up in a desk somewhere and actually makes it, all the way through to a real outcome.
Tina: That is the $30 million question or whatever. I'm totally with you, Matt. I think first it starts with the mindset and asking those questions up-front. So asking the questions, what is the business impact that we're trying to drive? What is the business decision we're trying to ask? Too often as researchers, we don't ask those tough questions up front. So I think it's like the tough questions up front of like, what is this going to be used for? What business impact? And sometimes you might need to help your stakeholders get there because they don't always know. There's a lot of that up front, I notice. And then once you get the results back, A, you have to have the courage to have a point of view. There's so often that I see researchers who are like, I don't want to tell them that they shouldn't do that. I'm terrified to put that point of view out there. And that's probably the number one thing that I hear from stakeholders, commercial stakeholders especially. They want to know the point of view. And the point of view should be based on the data and your experience. And those two pieces come together. And I think a lot of people just feel really, really nervous, about putting that point of view out there. And it's almost like, what's the worst thing they could do is to say, I don't agree and make the decision anyway. But too often, I think people don't put a point of view out there. They assume that it's clear from their conclusions and what they're saying. And then they sit back when somebody makes a bad decision. And they're like, I need a seat at the table. Like, nobody's listening to me. It's like, well, what did you say? So to me, having a point of view is really important. And then the last piece is understanding your stakeholders, as well as your consumers. So having that trust, having that partnership, having that connection with your commercial stakeholders, that's the only way you get them to really listen to you and be thoughtful and sort of earn their respect. And I think a lot of times we'll sit there and be like, well, they don't respect me. Well, why don't they respect you? Why aren't they calling you into those meetings? What is it that's holding them back? The kind of questions you would ask yourself about a consumer. Ask yourself that, about your stakeholders. And so to me, then, once you have that point of view and you understand your stakeholders really well, you know how you need to give it to them. Are they a numbers person? Do they need to hear the consumer? Do they need a quick run by in the hallway where you give them, I call it scoopage. Like the scoopage kind of person. Like, what is it that they need to really take in the perspective that you have? And that to me is like the most critical. One other thing I would say is that the more complex and foundational and transformational the work that you do, the more work you have to do to pull it through. And I've seen that like we did a huge study a few years ago and we did over a hundred workshops the first year. It was crazy. Internal. Like we just did them ourselves and we didn't manage to pull it through at the level that I thought we should have. And then we just kept going the next year and just kept finding ways of making the story simpler. Understanding why people weren't pulling it through and we kept tweaking it and optimizing it. And we had a huge breakthrough that second year. So I think the other thing I'd probably say is persistence and tenacity. If you really believe what you're doing is right, you know, have the courage to have that persistence and tenacity.
Stephanie: You know, what strikes me too about like just hearing you talk is I really feel like the question and the answer are primarily oriented towards like a brand side or client side researcher. But there's so much that I take away from that as the supplier side researcher. I think there's a tendency when we're consulting, Matt and I both do a lot of consulting, to assume that that work has been done, what you guys are trying to do and that we're trying to tighten and focus in on a methodology. And I have to remind myself all the time, especially the further that I get in my career, that it's okay to say, can we stop for a second and just back up and help me understand the business context?
Tina: Yes. Definitely. I wish the really great suppliers in my mind are the ones who, understand my organization as well as I do, because then they're bringing stuff to me and they'll say, okay, you're going to need a video this time. Let's make sure we have the data in the backup. They're delivering presentations to me that I can almost take right in because they know my people as well as I do. So to your point, Stephanie, I, a hundred percent agree that it's almost like people, everybody needs to lean in a little bit further than they are. Everybody needs to sort of get in everybody else's business a little bit more. I mean, like. Just a little bit, maybe not the whole way into everybody's business, but like understand what they're navigating and dealing with so that you can help them in the way that you sort of bring stuff to them.
Matt: And at the very least, like, this, like, ivory tower mentality that researchers have always had. Because we sort of, we like to think of ourselves as like, oh, we're the social scientists. It's such a comfortable place to be. I mean, I'm guilty of this for sure. Where it's like, hey, I'm just reporting the news.
Stephanie: The word stands for itself.
Matt: That's right. It's like, I've done my due diligence to make sure that the science has been applied with rigor. That's all great. But, I mean, those days are gone.
Tina: I totally agree with you, Matt. I think that the idea of really great researcher, it's absolutely true that we need to make sure that we are designing things with integrity, that we've got the right checks and balances in there. Like that is 100% true. That is, I think a lot of like machine learning and stuff is taken up in sort of taking up some of the slack in that space now, but we still need to like keep our eyes on it and make sure we don't lose it. But I do think that the more powerful areas are the ones where you influence people, but you can't think of yourself as an academic. Like I think some people that I've worked with in the past, like really, really awesome researchers are like they fall in love with the research versus the application of the research. And it's like, you can't fall in love with the research. You have to fall in love with making a difference with your research.
Matt: So making a difference. I've got one more like business-y related question that I think is really valuable to get your input on, which is, Stephanie and I were just talking about this too before we got on. But the idea of proving out the return. I remember five, six, 10-ish years ago, return on research investment was like such a big term. I mean, that was the hot topic. And there was all this energy being devoted towards figuring out ways to prove out a financial return on the work that we do. How do you do that today? From your background, all of this robust sort of business understanding and contextualization, what are the best ways to do that? How do you prove that the work is actually worth it?
Tina: Oh, Matt, you're singing my song now. So I think on this one, I'm actually really excited and proud of what the team has done. And I was actually just talking to them about this last week because I was like, I talked to a lot of people and not a lot of people have accomplished this sort of starting point, which is having a dollar number that you can use to quantify the impact of your team. And so that to me, I had a leader years ago in J&J, and he used to always say, when he goes in for the budget, he's like singing for our supper. You're like, I'm going to sing for a supper. And he'd always make sure that there was like some kind of quantified number. Because what happens is research is in the P&L. It's in that non-working area. It's a cost. So in order to get more resources and in order to have people think about research differently, you have to shift it in people's minds from a cost to a profit or a sales driver. But by the way, that's like another shiny, what do I call it? Shiny horse or something.
Stephanie: It's another uniform, right?
Tina: It's another silver bullet. It's good luck with that one. So what we did was we went out and looked at sort of all the different ways people do things. And ultimately, if you get really good about understanding the business question that you're asking and what business act you think you'll have, you can do some work to actually quantify what that upside would be. And you have to be okay with assumptions. I've tried this probably 18 different ways during my career. I've always been focused on like, how do we get that number? And you can spend millions of dollars quantifying the effect of your own research in order to have a number that everybody can stand behind. I haven't spent millions of dollars, but I definitely have had people spending way too much time getting the accuracy and precision of those numbers perfect. What I find is, and this to me was the big epiphany over the last couple of years, my team did this. They led an effort where they brought the insights folks and the analytics folks together. And they looked at it and said, what is the business impact? And then understand simple, like simple math, okay? If my household penetration is X, and this is designed to try to grow household penetration, if I make an assumption that it'll grow 0.1, what does that look like? And then what's the sales impact of that? And then, oh, by the way, if you really want to get ahead of it, like, what's the profit impact of that? Because if you know, for us, if you know sort of your gross margins and things, you can literally come back in and say, okay, you've inputted something in up here, but the back end has all of your sales and your performance information into it so that you just put it up here. And then it automatically calculates the amount that you have impacted. And I have two people on the team who bless them. They are sort of my champions for this, my insights and my analytics people. I've got two people who are the champions of it. And they kind of like drive the accountability in the team. I probably drive the accountability, but they sort of drive the process to make sure that everybody's getting in there because it is a little bit painful to have to like do that work, but it's a hell of a lot less painful than when your budgets get cut 20%. And so for me, we've been doing that. And I am really careful to do it right around the time when I have to have budget conversations, because that is the time where you better be walking in there and saying, I want a budget of X. Here's what we have delivered. So the last two years, three years, I've been able to go in and talk about the business impact that this team has had. At the same time, I was trying to justify the budget. And it makes that conversation so much easier. Is it perfect? No. And are they like throwing money at me, like an ROI kind of perspective? No. But it definitely helps shift that mindset from like, it's totally just we're throwing money out there to like, we're actually doing something that I can look at driving the business. It's another one of those progress over perfection. It's highly assumptive based, but it is very logical. And I think people can't argue with logic.
Matt: It's true. So if I'm a researcher today, now Stephanie's telling me I got to understand finance. I've got to understand the balance sheet. I've got to understand the business and the strategy. I got to get into the P&Ls. Is there a tool out there that might help me do research? What is GenAI?
Stephanie: What a segue. Wow.
Matt: What is this GenAI?
Tina: I said initially, but then boy, you just laid it on thick enough that even my brain could catch where you were going. So that's brilliant, Matt. Thank you. Thank you for that beautiful setup. Generative AI can help. I think generative AI, what I love about it is like, what's the agent that you need help from? And you just sort of plug in the need that you have. It can help you get really smart about stuff that you're not smart about. I would say the one caution I'd have on that one is I would become best friends with the people in finance. So for me, what I like to do is I like to back to the understanding, my organization. Every organization has slightly different financial goals. And so you need to understand where's the culture of the finance goals. And is it like, oh, we got to drive profit. I'm making this up. That's not the case in my company. But cost savings, that kind of stuff, you know, like what are the things that they're driving for? Because if you come in and you don't have that in mind, then you're tone deaf. But I don't know. Don't tell anybody. I guess I'm outing myself here. I don't know all the puts and takes of the P&L and like balance sheets. I don't know everything about that. But I do know where we fit. I know that we fit in this place. And I know we drive impact in this place. And those are really important places to understand. So I think it's not understanding everything, but it is understanding where you sit and the impact that you drive and be really good friends with people on finance, because you can go ask them dumb questions. You can also ask generative AI dumb questions. But I find that my finance people generally have better answers than my generative AI agent. But that's me.
Matt: That's great.
Stephanie: Yeah, good to know. Another topic that we wanted to kind of chat with you about, I know we're just hitting you left and right. So this one is, we know how important it is for Consumer Insights to move at the speed of business, to move at the speed of marketing, which is, I mean, it's real time now. That's the world we live in. Everything is real time. And what did we say? What are we going to call it? The shiny golden horse that has been brought to us is, of course, Agile, agile methods and Agile processes. And that is the, you know, the kind of work that allows us to kind of meet speed, meet standardization goals so that the right person has the right data at the right time. I'm curious if you see any downsides to our industry's shift to this Agile process, like a re-sacrificing depth and nuance for speed and standardization. Where do you guys land with Agile?
Tina: I think it depends on the problem to solve. I would again go back to sometimes it's okay to have, I always call it like quick and dirty research, so there's like, you just want to make sure it's quick and not too dirty. Sometimes it's okay to have a little bit of smudges and dirt in what you're talking about, but there's sometimes where you need that stuff to be pristine, perfect because of the risk associated with it. So for me, I kind of look at it on that risk profile of the higher the risk, the more time, effort, and quality is critically important. But there's a lot of times I know in my organization, we sort of joke about, just asking the consumer, because so often people will be like, is it black or is it blah, blah, blah? Like, what color should we pick? You know what, guys, just ask a consumer. Like if we have that Agile panel that can always be asking questions, we've used that, we've tapped into it a lot just to, you don't have to pull together a brief and all this kind of stuff. It's like, I just want to know this one little thing, like that's super easy. And that's a great use for it in my mind. When you start using the wrong tool for the wrong job, i.e., starting to ask a really simple question out of a really complex methodology, well, then that's just not going to work very well. And the same thing on the other side, if you try to take a really complex, high-risk business problem and put that into an Agile, quick and dirty kind of thing, you're just increasing your risk. So it's almost like a risk tolerance perspective, how I think about it. And there are times when we have things that we have, it is more important to have speed over quality.
Stephanie: That makes sense. I think the use of color as an example is one, is that has always resonated to me. I had somebody very early on in my career say, if the situation is they're going to make it and they're going to make it in one color or the other, 80% confidence is fine. Flipping it as long as it's better than a coin flip. And that was revolutionary to me because I came from an academic background.
Tina: There's the right way and the wrong way to do things.
Stephanie: Big learning moment. Yeah.
Tina: I'm a big fan of scrappy, not crappy. Have a little bit of both of those in there, but never, never too much.
Matt: Is it a slippery slope though? Because so most definitely I have spent time on the client side. I know some executives, once they get a taste for that quick hit insight that just, it drives a decision or validates a decision, suddenly they can tackle everything with a scrappy, not crappy research. Do you find sometimes that there's a danger of maybe biasing your stakeholders or your executives towards a research method that's really fast and suddenly now their expectations are shifting because that's what they're used to? Have you seen that happen at all? Is there something you can do to sort of corral that?
Tina: I mean, I would say 100%, Matt. I think there's a constant battle between the unrealistic expectations of upper management and the what we can accomplish or achieve reality of our jobs. And so what I have found is there's the Agile thing, which was like, oh, we'll solve everything with Agile and you can spend less money and just like pull stuff out of the web and then they give you answers. And so we've had to say yes. And sometimes that's appropriate, right? That's like part of our job is managing those expectations. And that's the not sexy part of our job. And that's the hard part of our job because I think a lot of times the researchers who are really effective get in there, roll up their sleeves and have those tough conversations, even with a general manager and say, here's why that is not going to work. But you have to be an influencer and understand them. And what the issue is so that you can articulate that. But that's hard work. The other piece that I've noticed recently is generative AI and AI in overall. And so I've gotten on this big soapbox for a while now to be like, research has been doing AI for like 10 plus years, guys. It's generative AI. And generative AI is so early and new that it's like this new baby with a magic wand. I always joke it's actually like Harry Potter. Harry Potter in your pocket. So it's Harry Potter, but it's Harry Potter when he first went to school and he didn't know what he was doing. And, you know, he'd like could be super dangerous. But like our job to me is to put Harry like under our wing and say, okay, let me teach you the ways and to protect that amazing foundational technology from over or under expectations that come from people who don't spend time or have misconceptions about it.
Stephanie: So true.
Matt: That's such an endearing branding of GenAI. I love it. That's going to stick with me forever. I know we're closing up on time, but there is a question going back to your work in future research. We were just curious to get your opinion on a lot of conversations centered on the industry. Where is the industry going? What role is GenAI going to play? Since you have this robust background in tracking populations, thinking far out in advance, maybe underserved populations, what are the big consumer trends that people should be paying attention to if they're in our industry five years out, ten years out?
Tina: You know what's fascinating? So we started this last year. We started a foresight capability at our company, and I'm super proud of it. But what we did as we were approaching that is a lot of times people talk about what's the hot trend that's happening right now. And I had a moment as we were preparing for this where I was like, yeah, well, we need to think into the future, like what trend's really hot? And it was like, a trend that's really hot is happening right now. For me, it was such an awakening to go, oh, my God, I'm thinking about this wrong. And instead, we said, okay, let's look five years into the future. And what are the things that you know with a high degree of confidence are going to be happening five years in the future? Let's just start there. And it's things like looking at demographic changes. That's pretty easy to look at and to see what we think is going to happen with the demographics of the United States from an age, ethnicity, all that stuff. You can look five years in the future and pretty much see what that's going to look like. Climate change, that's another one.
Stephanie: You can live in macro stuff.
Tina: Macro things. And by the way, if you take the time to really think about five years in the future and sort of visit that five years in the future, first of all, people get depressed. So I'm a fan of apocalyptic novels, like dystopian things. So for me, it was probably not as shocking as it was for some other folks. But for a lot of folks, they kind of have that initial shock of like, oh, that doesn't feel great because the future does have a lot of challenges in it. But once you do that, you can actually look back. I always joke it's like hindsight. So if you can give yourself the gift of hindsight, how many times do we say hindsight's 2020 and learning from our mistakes? But how do you learn from looking five years in the future and look back and be like, wow, what do we do now about climate change and how it infects people's lives and what they're doing? Because people aren't really thinking about that. But there's tornadoes. There's huge like all these things are happening for a reason. And it's just going to get more. So how do you think about that and say, what do I do now to make a difference there? And I think that's actually really exciting. And people tended to get over the whole dystopian fear. Once you start saying if you act now and not put your head in the sand, you can actually make more of a difference in the future than if you just ignore it because it's depressing.
Matt: I love the idea of going there, quote unquote. I mean, I think there's so much power in that. Like, brought up the interest in the apocalyptic novels, science fiction. Like, futurists forever have said these things are fun to read and they're fun to understand. Everybody loves Star Wars and Star Trek, but so prophetic to some degree. I mean, there's value in just imagining a future state and actually going there. I love that idea as an activity and then sort of doing a retrospective on, oh, no, what should we have known? How should we have prepared for this?
Tina: Things we haven't talked about that I think is a really, really critical skill for researchers and will continue to be in the future even more so is storytelling. I know people talk about it's a little bit of a hot thing right now, but I think how do you truly immerse them in the future to your exact point, Matt? Because there's reading stuff and understanding intellectually, and then there's feeling it emotionally. And I find that when you can get people to feel stuff emotionally and move them emotionally, they're much more ready to act and sort of change things than if you just say, well, X percent of the population will be X and Y percent of the population will be Y versus like, let me paint a picture of this person's family. And really did make a huge difference for the team.
Stephanie: Well, Tina, it has been an absolute pleasure to get to speak with you today. I have to say, I actually want to listen to this podcast. So that I can hear a lot of that again, because I just feel like there's so, so much applicable stuff in there. So I really appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation.
Tina: I've enjoyed it very much myself. Thanks, guys.
Matt: And Tina, if anybody wants to get a hold of you or maybe look up any of your previous work, where can they go to reach out to you or find any of your other famous quotes?
Tina: So you can just go on LinkedIn. I have all of my stuff pretty much posted there. I'm going to get better about it. I have to figure out how to get better about that because I'm now doing more and more of these podcasts and loving them. So I have to figure out a way to get that a little more obviously available to folks on my profile. So I'll take that as a follow up, Matt. But for now, if everybody goes on to LinkedIn, they can connect with me there and all of the podcasts that I've done. I think most of them are LinkedIn there.
Stephanie: Well, thanks again for your time. We so appreciate it.
Tina: Thank you.
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