Better Customer Insights Through Innovation

Priscilla McKinney: Welcome to Ponderings from the Perch, the Little Bird Marketing Company podcast. I'm Priscilla McKinney, CEO and Mama Bird here. With you as always, I bring amazing people in from this industry, from marketing and market research, and we talk shop and we really just have a conversation. It's so lovely to talk with peers who are unconsciously competent and so willing to share their expertise.

You're gonna love my guest today. I have with me today Richard Heath. He is the managing director over at Blue Yonder. And this is a new switchover from Blue Yonder, which is now a Curion company. So there is a lot of innovation in Richard's past and obviously in his future, but he's done a lot of interesting products related to market research over the years, and so he has a tremendously storied past and a knowledge of what it takes to really innovate in this market.

He knows a lot about the future of AI in insights, loves to have those kinds of conversation. And he even hosts an innovation day within the company that really focuses on initiatives where the team can really share expertise, share thoughts. And really continue to develop and be an answer for that in the industry. Richard Heath, welcome to the show.

Richard Heath: Thank you. Very happy to be here. So innovative am I in that I've actually changed my job title since we first discussed this.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, we knew that was going to be happening with the acquisition. So, well, correct everybody. What is your new title now under Curion?

Richard Heath: So I'm now the chief innovation officer for Curion, which is really exciting. So taking all of that experience that I had with Blue Yonder and injecting it across the Curion company, which yeah, is very exciting.

Priscilla McKinney: It is, it is. So and that's what I want to talk with you about today. You have really done a good job of bringing the innovation into practical use. And you've built these innovative products with client teams, actually, even going beyond your own team. So walk us through a little bit, maybe even a specific moment when a consumer insight just changed the direction of a product you were building and something happened that was unexpected because that's where you and I constantly have these really juicy conversations over the surprise and being ready for that unexpected.

Richard Heath: Yeah. So yeah, I can definitely share a couple of examples. I think it's really the cultural thing though, apart from any of the specific examples and that's what we always try to do with Blue Yonder and you mentioned that Innovation Day which is part of it, but what you've got to do is build a culture where people know that they'll be rewarded for having new ideas and bringing new ideas even if they don't work. And that's when you get those little glorious moments of someone just tweaking something really quite slightly that really improves things. Or the really big things.

And it goes for internally in the work that we're doing in the agency, but also with clients obviously in the projects that we're doing and trying new methods with them. Because clients are the same. Any new idea or new approach or innovation is a risk. Like it might not work. And internally you risk your reputation, you risk maybe your budget a little bit, but hopefully you're a bit supported.

For the client you might not get the ROI you need, you're spending a lot of money and it might not work so there's always that risk thing so whether it's big or small innovations it's always about making sure that there is a culture and making sure that people feel safe to do it. So thinking about insight projects, the one I always remember is quite a long time ago now, but it always sticks with me. I was lucky to be involved in some of the early neuroscience work.

Instead of just using traditional metrics like do you like this, what do you think about this, you know, what we now call system two, looking at the system one metrics, which are more about your instinctive opinion. So I had this amazing client, I won't name the company, but it was a beer client, and she knew about system one and she wanted to try it out, and she had this brief of I need to understand beer is under threat from gin and vodka and the like. And also from wine. Like we don't just compete within beer, we compete with other alcoholic beverage categories.

So we also have this dynamic of what's going to happen when we start talking to consumers about ABV content, nutritional information, and ingredients. So she wanted to understand that in several different markets around the world, but not just looking at the obvious traditional metrics. So we use some implicit associations and neuroscience techniques to get under the skin of it. And it was really interesting that without giving too much away, it was like the impact of looking at people's opinions about beer before and after they know what is actually in beer, including the alcohol content, but also things like carbohydrate content, the fact that it's made from wheat or barley or hops, and the associations that that creates.

So one of the interesting insights that I remember was that people were actually broadly okay with the calorie content. But what we picked up in the implicit associations that we didn't get in the explicit was actually the ingredients. So when people realise that there's wheat and therefore carbs, then they've got a problem because they know carbs are bad. And then they connect carbs to calories to unhealthiness.

And once you publicise that, that becomes a real challenge actually for beer companies. So if we'd have just stuck with the traditional metrics, we'd have looked at calorie content and thought, well, that's actually okay. But actually with the implicit, we were like we need to really communicate well around carbohydrates and that was a completely different direction for them. There was loads more that came out of that, but I remember that client was the first person to try those metrics en masse. This was a big global study, it was a lot of money. And it was just basically about the guts to do it and to try it.

Priscilla McKinney: Okay.

Richard Heath: Yeah, that's what I learned, like okay, you need to be brave to try these things.

Priscilla McKinney: Right. Well, but then you've actually baked bravery into the system. And now actually, Curion operates from a ten percent innovation time model. And when you talk to me about that, I was like, I'm intrigued. So tell me a little bit about what you all mean by that model. What does that really mean in practical day-to-day work?

Richard Heath: I think you have to measure it and you can't just say, we want a culture of innovation. You have to put some metrics around that and be objectively able to say whether you're achieving it or not. So starting at Blue Yonder, so my background obviously last eight years is at Blue Yonder, growing this innovative agency. We were really clear that we would put 10% of the team focused on innovation and ten percent of our profits would be reinvested back into innovation. It's a really nice line to be able to talk to clients about that, but also it was true, and that seemed to be the number that we were able to generate.

You can also, in agencies, you have timesheets and you measure what people are spending their time on. So we created a code for just it's not client time, it's not to a project, it's just across the whole company. I've spent some time trying something new. And we made sure that was high. If that ever dropped too low, we would investigate it and explore it. And then you mentioned it before, we have these things quarterly where we actually, like in a small company like Blue Yonder, this is much easier.

In Curion, we're going to find different ways of doing it. But we actually got people to log every new innovation that they had done, big or small. And there's tons of examples of huge stuff and tiny little bits of code that people have changed. And we actually held ourselves accountable as a company. Like we've hit a benchmark here, and we need that to keep going up or at least stay the same quarter on quarter. And if it ever dropped, which occasionally it did, you're like, okay, why has it dropped? Everyone's really busy. We're not doing it, it's great, we're growing and we're busy doing work, but we're not innovating. Let's talk about that. What can we do to free up more capacity? So that's the sort of thing that hopefully we'll be able to bring to bear in the bigger organisation as well.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, you say that there was like big wins in innovation, but you did mention small little wins, a little piece of coding. Give us a suggestion of like an example of what you mean by that, because you know, people listen to the show and they want to apply something that's working or something that could help them make a pivot or improve their company ever so slightly. So what are some of those unexpected little things or larger things?

Richard Heath: So yeah and that's what I mean by a culture is you got to celebrate the big and the small. So I know it sounds cliche, but like you get to the big stuff by having lots of little things and you have this culture of small things happening that creates the conditions for the big thing to happen. So like we do a lot of face-to-face product research, say we have a warehouse that we process a lot of product. So just somebody figuring out a new way to arrange the shelves or a new way to manage the booking system so that we're more efficient about where we're storing things. That's incredible because it sounds really mundane, but it tangibly saves people time and stuff like that can make people's lives easier.

So you don't have the meeting and say, well done, you did a new booking system. You say you did this booking system and you saved the company and your teammates a day a week. Coding is a great example because it's just so I think it's become much easier over my time to make quick changes. So our data team is just fantastic at that. They're constantly re-engineering like little hacks to just run the data faster. Or now we've got this tool called Sprint AI, which allows clients to get their data from the CLT into their hands 24 hours later. That's only possible because the data team have used a bit of AI to automate the thing.

Actually, quite easy stuff. You could tell that I'm not the expert on how. I couldn't tell you how they did it. But they've just these little automations. Another brilliant example was we do a lot of shopper work. So we have this thing called Shopper Lab, where you mock up a store. And you let people come through the store and purchase things like they normally would, but in a controlled environment, and then you can measure it.

So obviously the question we're trying to answer is if we change the shelves, do people buy more or less? And we were doing that and then we had real life baskets and the team were counting the stuff in the baskets, adding it up and inputting it manually. And then suddenly one of the leaders of the data team was like, why don't we do what would they do in a shop and barcode scan it? This is five years of sort of going out, but it just changed the game on the shopper study.

Priscilla McKinney: Right. Yeah. Right.

Richard Heath: It sounds really obvious, but just a bit of lateral thinking and another example is that you need to empower people because the money that we needed to do that is like a hundred dollars, it was nothing. So you're just like, yep, do it. And then they run it, go buy the thing, do it themselves, and it shaves days and days off the processing of these studies. So yeah, I could go on and on, but

Priscilla McKinney: My goodness. I do love that, a culture of small wins along with the big wins. But I'm gonna steal that one. I'm gonna come back to my team. We like to do a digital transformation of the team and we do a little bit of show and tell. How did you do that? How did you use Claude to do that? How did you create that webhook? You know, years ago it was, you know, how did you save multiple tabs on that Google? You know, like just amazing things that cut so much time out of your day, but sharing it with the team and celebrating with a team is really big.

But I want to back track just a minute. You mentioned that you did a lot of CLTs and for anybody who's listening who doesn't know what that is, that's a central location test. And so that kind of gives you a clue a little bit more about what Curion does and what they're really charged with a lot of product testing. And so they do that central location testing for a lot of products and they do in market testing. So that's why he alludes to, you know, this talk about having actual products stored. So just give you a little bit more context there.

But you dropped the AI word, Richard. So I'm gonna take you there next. Because people do associate this idea of innovation or digitally transforming your team with AI. But that's really just one and a new set of tools that we have now to use this innovative approach with our teams. But as AI is becoming more embedded in this industry of consumer research, where do you see it actually helping and where have you seen it kind of get in the way since you had this established innovation process going?

Richard Heath: Yeah. I think it's a privilege of my job is like it's my job to be across it and so I am not a technical expert, anybody that knows me will know that I'm not. Like what I really enjoy is helping people make decisions and seeing new stuff make an impact. Like that's what excites me. So the AI journey over the last couple of years has been really interesting.

I think the first thing to say is that the needs, like obviously a market research company, so we're thinking about brands who fundamentally are using research to make better decisions to go get to market faster and to win in market. Like those needs haven't changed. So they still want good commercial decisions and they still need it faster than they needed it last year and ideally cheaper as well. So that's been the I've been in it since two thousand and four and that's been the same ever since, right? So any innovation and AI is no different. It's just about like what's the extent to which we can work on those things. Basically faster, better, cheaper. And in some places it's helping a lot and I wouldn't say it's got in the way to be honest.

I think what you're seeing with AI is a very necessary debate where people are bringing if you go to a conference, like I know you like Quirks and conferences of the like, you go to there and you'll see just an array of promises basically of people coming and saying I've fixed this, I've fixed that, I've used AI to do this. And then it's our job as the researchers to kick the tires and to see whether it actually works and to ask the questions. And a lot of them will work, but for certain use cases.

So I don't think I've seen any sophistry. The platforms that are getting developed, I don't know everyone personally, but in general, they've all got an idea, they're really passionate about their idea and they want to help in a certain corner of the industry. So I'm not so worried about that. It's more about like can this work for the types of products that we're working on? Curion does a lot of work on product formulation, the real scientific specifics of products. So is it what works for a brand team, is that gonna work for R&D? So that's the sort of conversation that's happening. But basically the potential is really exciting.

So if you take research back to brass tacks, like human researchers can be biased. We do bring our biases into research. So does AI, but not the same biases. We're not as good at spotting patterns as AI is, like en masse. So qualitative data, you know that's where you ask people in like a conversation like this and it used to be that you might be able to do that with a few dozen people at maximum, then a qualitative researcher would spend two weeks in a room analysing it, coming up with a story and putting it to a client, and it would be brilliant, but it would take two weeks and it would cost, you know, tens of thousands, often six figures. AI can do all of the legwork of that and in seconds.

So why would you not use that to speed up the process? You still need the human to sense check it and to dig into it and make sure that it's right. But the process improvements are really real. But what AI can't do is it doesn't debate. Well, actually it can debate with itself a bit, but it doesn't debate like a human debates. It is fundamentally based on what's already happened. That's all it's doing, it's modelling stuff that's already happened.

So humans don't do that. Humans can look forward, they can be creative, they can extrapolate and have real creative thought, in my opinion. And we have our instincts as well. Like we talked to a few clients about AI models that don't feel intuitive. It's like if you're a client, if you've been working on ice cream for ten years, and something doesn't feel right, it's not right. Because you know your consumers and you know your market. And that is a human instinct that's really quite hard to define. So there are people who are immersed in AI who would debate that with me for sure. But I just think it's really interesting because there is definitely a line where humans and AI can basically benefit each other. It's not one or the other.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah. No, I totally agree. And I think it's about finding that fine tuning of what it is we're expecting AI to do and what we expect from these experts that are on our teams. Because sometimes it isn't that you know something is wrong, is that you feel something is wrong and you've got to go test it a little bit. Like a good scientist, you gotta go test it a little bit.

A lot of people who listen to this podcast are frequent flyers at conferences around the world for marketing and for market research. But some of us get a little bit in our world. Either it's a very US-based world, maybe it's a Europe-based world. And there's a smaller group of people who truly work global every day, day in and day out, right? But I think you being a guest here on my podcast gives me a unique chance to ask you what you think of how different the US market is to the UK market. And then I'm going to ask you a little bit about where Curion's going with that. But I think that's just a gift you could give my audience of really where has the US been, where have they developed and maybe undeveloped and same thing over in the UK. What are your thoughts?

Richard Heath: Yeah. I need to be quite careful not to cause offence. So it's really interesting. I think you've got to be really I used to work in Asia, so I spent eight years in Asia and my job was to go into different markets all around Southeast Asia, all the capitals, China, India, Australia. And the one thing I learned there is that cultural differences are real. Countries are different, you do have to appreciate them, but also there is no universal either. There are still individuals. Company cultures are different to national cultures. So you have to unpick all that.

Having said that, in general, I think with the US market, you get bigger scale. You definitely do. There are huge UK companies and European companies, of course there are. But a lot of the companies that we're working with in the US, they are massive, major global companies. And with that comes risk. The risk appetite drops because they've got so much to lose. If you're working with more mid tier, more nimble startup companies, they are a little bit more prepared to take a risk on new technology and to try something new.

Data security becomes a thing, like the bigger the company, the higher the risk of data security risks. So that just slows things down. The layers are there, you've got to go through all the way up to the CTO to get things done. And when you're talking to people who just want to get the job done on the day-to-day and get a product on the shelf, there's no point saying to them, well, let's go forward with AI. You have to respect where their company is.

And we've kind of come up with two axes, like there's to embrace new technology and AI, there's your company readiness, which is basically about company risk appetite, and all companies, all the huge companies have spent a lot of time and money and pay people, experts, to assess this. So you have to respect it. But it's basically risk appetite. And then the other one is data readiness. So there are actually huge companies out there, I'm deliberately not naming any companies here, there are huge companies out there who want to progress with AI but their data's not ready. They haven't tidied it, they haven't cleaned it. It's got to be readable by the AI, so there's a bit of work to be done there.

So you've got those two axes of like the companies that are really ready for it and their data is ready, they're the ones that are ahead and we can talk to them and I can tell you who they are. And then there are others who just aren't quite ready and are probably three or four or five years away. So I'm dodging your question a little bit on the UK versus US, but they are the variables at play when it comes to new technology.

Priscilla McKinney: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, let's talk a little bit, let's get more specific because Curion, a US based company, has acquired Blue Yonder, a UK based company. So let's talk about then instead of picking apart what's underdeveloped places, what do you think the new bigger, better combined approach is?

Richard Heath: Yeah. I think it's really nice. So you'll have heard our guys talking about this in public. It's genuinely true that like we have a really nice fit as companies. So there's the practical and the emotional side of that, I think. So the practical fit is Blue Yonder had got to a point where we had a really great client base. We're doing a third of our business already in the US, but we were a small company, we couldn't quite make the leap to getting a team out there. We join up with Curion and Curion's got six or seven fantastic facilities all the way across the US. They've got 300 people, they've got a team so suddenly Blue Yonder has got access to that and our clients have got access to that so that's amazing.

Curion have got I'd say 20-30 years in sensory and product. Blue Yonder less so on the sensory, more on the product. So we have immediately got that access to things like QDA and the small scientific side of what Curion does. So that's great. And then for Curion's part, Blue Yonder's got a fantastic global network. We're big in the UK and then we've got a very good network of partners around the world. So Curion needed to tap into that for their clients to spread and do their work globally.

And then Blue Yonder, I think objectively it's true, has an innovative toolkit that Curion is able to tap into. And you know I was talking before about that culture of innovation and the entrepreneurial mindset of let's just try this, let's just see if this works. And if it doesn't, we'll learn our lessons and we'll do it again. I think Curion will benefit from that as well. So it's a really nice meshing.

I was talking about the emotional bit just to finish the thought is the culture. Like you could have the most perfect rational jigsaw fit, but if the people believed in different things it would be a problem. So Curion and Blue Yonder fundamentally they want to do good work and they want their teams to be happy. So that's it really. Well if you've got that, you can navigate most things.

Priscilla McKinney: I love it when companies like this come together because they're all a bunch of social scientists. So they understand the human aspect of it. They understand culture to it. They understand like a point of view. They understand that intuition, those years of expertise that has that almost unspoken quality to it. And I think that's what's been fun for me to watch teams get acquired in this industry because it is not being acquired necessarily so much as a this plus this equals more.

And I've heard that conversation happen a lot of times and I really think it's lovely. And it is important because it is human understanding multiplied by human understanding out of a different culture and from a different perspective. And it gets richer and richer. I love that.

I know I've talked with some of the Curion team and they are very excited about some of the standards of innovation. And I mean that, like the actual what we talked about, the real quality of time that's been committed to innovation. So I love that. But let's pivot that for a minute and say you're talking not to each other, but talking with a CPG client as you normally would day to day. So let's just kind of pretend a CPG brand comes to you and says, you know, maybe quietly, maybe they're embarrassed. You know, we really haven't innovated in a lot of years. So from your perspective and your knowledge, what are the first things you would ask them? What would that conversation sound like?

Richard Heath: So I think you've always got to simplify these things and just so my first question would be how's business? How's that working out? And maybe they haven't innovated for years and everything's great and they have no threats coming through and there's no DTC companies coming to eat their share and everything is great. So be it. It's not for me to say that they need to innovate more, right? So it's like how's business, how's this really affecting you? What risks do you foresee coming over the horizon? What are the threats? And sort of start there. I'd be really surprised if you have that conversation and there's no need to innovate, right?

So then it's about well what do you need? And that's about your customers. What do your customers need? I'm a market researcher, that's what the first question always is, what do your customers actually need from you? Do you know where they're going? Do you know in detail where they are now? Which is a one-on-one conversation and it's not something people always know because it's hard. And then more importantly, like some of our most forward-looking clients are using the word foresight a lot now. I used to hear it a lot in marketing context, but in product development as well. Like what are your consumers going to need a couple of years from now?

And then if the answer is I'm not sure, I don't know, or they look stressed, then that's fine, that's where we can help. We can start to unpick it and try and put together something that can help. But that's always the first question. Like I would never advocate innovation for the sake of it. Like Blue Yonder and Curion, we have to innovate because our customers that's what they need. We've asked ourselves the question, what do our customers need? Where's this thing going? And it's going in an innovative place. And our customers need us to be a bit faster and cheaper and better than we were three years ago. So we have to innovate, so that's why we do it. But this is definitely never innovation for the sake of it, right? It's got to be based on either a business need or a customer need. So that's the answer to your question. That's where I start.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah. And I love that embedded in that is well, how well do you know your customer? Let's start at the very basics, but okay, I'm gonna put you a little bit on the spot because this is where I got to actually meet Richard in person. I was at Quirks Chicago and he was presenting on something that in my opinion was very innovative. It was very in the moment. And it was a study that you did, Curion and Blue Yonder teams, UK and US, about the GLP one shopper. This is on a lot of people's minds. CPG, alcohol, food and beverage, just like a QSR, like go down the list. People are concerned that they need these answers to that question you asked, which is how well do you know your consumer? Well, that consumer just changed.

So I just wanna give you a chance to kind of say what you talked about in that presentation to me, I was sitting there kind of with my mouth open. I'm sorry if I looked really bad in the audience for you, but it was just a lot of current information that was really great. And I also thought it was very interesting because your teams did it in the UK and the US and brought it together. But for my audience, give them a little bit of a rundown of what you did. And I think it more than anything showcases some of the innovation that you all have and the strength you have together.

Richard Heath: Yes. So there's a lot in there. But I think you actually summed up quite neatly there that the consumer has changed. So without getting into the research methods, we've got this is another study where we deliberately didn't just say, okay, you're on GLP one. How is it? How have you changed explicitly? Like we used a few creative techniques and we got people to measure things in different ways and feedback to us. So we got a really good understanding of how it actually is.

We use this button to count moments. So we said to people wear this button, about that big. Click every time you eat something, whether it's for hunger or non-hunger. And that just enabled us to measure these moments where food is coming in. And we did that amongst people that are on GLP1, have been on GLP1 or have never been on GLP1. So we sort of compared and contrasted.

And it's just really interesting. The exact numbers escaped me a little bit but the first thing is I think it was 30%, there's 30% fewer consumption moments if you're on GLP1, and that doesn't really change when you've come off GLP1. So if you're a marketer of a food, any food brand, or a producer of any food brand, you're trying to compete in all of these occasions against many, many other things. Well now there's two or three less a day of those occasions. So that's the first thing, right? That's huge. And we sort of extrapolated out and across the US, that's hundreds of millions of food and beverage occasions lost every day, they're just gone. Because estimates say 15 to 25% of people are on GLP one or have used GLP1. So that's the first thing, is like this is a big deal. Like that's the first point of the presentation, is like you need to look at this.

And then there's all the sort of emotional stuff that goes on with it as well. So, you know, we don't just eat for hunger, we eat because we need an uplift or it's we're bored or we've hurt ourselves or we want to reward ourselves. So if people are no longer consuming for those reasons, then what's gonna fill the gap? Is it other categories that could come in and do a job that are not to do with consumption? Or do food and beverage brands have this brilliant opportunity to repackage and reshape themselves in a calorie-managed but really emotionally loaded way, maybe?

Yeah, there's all sorts that comes off that. But it basically does go back to that. Like know your customer and if your customer is changing, then it could be quite threatening, but the message we were trying to give is like, this is an opportunity. Your consumers' needs have changed. Let's innovate. Let's do something different to meet them.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah. My goodness. I love that. Well, it was astounding, let me tell you. And it was so nice to hear something so fresh. I will actually put in my show notes a link to the study that you did. So if anybody's listening is like, I want to know more, let me tell you the study was riveting and you guys showcased an awful lot of your findings and I found that to be really helpful. That's one of the things I love to do in this show is pull the curtain back a little bit. Let's take a look.

And I felt like you guys were really generous with sharing the findings so that people could really understand where do we start? You know, if we're gonna have a quality conversation about this and really innovate in order to serve our customer better, what kind of conversation should we have? But I really thought that was great. You've obviously heard from here that Richard Heath is willing to chat about anything regarding innovation and what's going on in market research. Certainly very approachable. So do reach out to him on LinkedIn. And it's Richard Heath, exactly how it sounds R-I-C-H-A-R-D H-E-A-T-H. And the lovely accent, of course, you know he's over from across the pond. So I always love having people on with the extra accent. It's just, you know, it helps the show just a little bit. But Richard, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Richard Heath: Happy to be of service. No, thanks for having me. It's been fun. Cheers.

Priscilla McKinney: From all the peeps here at Little Bird Marketing, have a great day and happy marketing.