Quirks New York Conference Flyover Day 2

Priscilla McKinney: Robert Pierson with Borderless Access. I just listened to your presentation in there and I'm kind of reeling. So tell me about why this fragile consumer sentiment is something that brands need to be paying attention to fiercely right now.

Robert Pierson: It's all about individualism, right? So in terms of the current situation, especially in the United States right now is where sentiment changes on an hour by hour basis. It's not even a day by day basis anymore. Brands need to focus on the individuality of who they're targeting, how they're targeting them, center focus on the sentiment, listening and understanding and researching into their customers and profiling them to understand where they need to target. Because what we've seen in the marketplace is that there's with consumers, they're now sitting because of their fragile sentiment right now. They're sitting with a little pile of rocks beside them, ready to throw them directly at the brands as the brands screw up. In the last year, you've seen Nike mess up. You've seen Unilever mess up. You've seen Kraft Heinz messed up with a ketchup ad, which was culturally insensitive. So as these things happen, there's the whole David and Goliath thing where consumers are in control of how brands grow. People are worried about their finances right now. They're worried about how to put food on their plates. But are brands paying attention to this and do they have a long term strategy in terms of how they continuously engage with customers? Because if they don't have that long term strategy, they're going to fall down regardless of how big they are right now. You've seen this with Elon Musk, with Tesla in Europe. You've seen it with Tesla over here as he went into politics, how people suddenly turned overnight and turned against him. But it's short lived because the concentration span of the consumer is very short. And so now the prices and share prices and cars have gone back up again.

Priscilla McKinney: So it's about re-engagement. Yeah, but that's not always the case. And as you pointed out in your presentation, brands can suffer a short-term loss and then they can get over it, but some brands never get over it. And that is the risk, that is the danger. And even over time, if you keep having these small little earthquakes from your brand, then maybe over time you won't be resilient and you can't count on that. It frightens me to death that idea of the consumer with that little pile of rocks, but the consumer is in the driver's seat for sure.

Robert Pierson: A hundred percent. And the consumer's not happy. So when the consumer's not happy and they're waiting for somebody to blame, the first place they're going to go to are the brands, the biggest brands that they engage with.

Priscilla McKinney: It's not just unhappy. I think it's also they're fearful. And you really pointed that out and I think that was a really underlying concept. And I feel like where marketing used to be fun is kind of like pushing on that fear of missing out and getting people engaged. Now, because it's such a fear cycle, now people are so afraid of messing up. And so I kind of moved that from FOMO to FOMU. So brands are feeling very paralyzed. Just kind of in wrapping this up, because obviously I'm passionate about the subject and I really felt this was a great presentation. But what would you say to brands who are experiencing that fear of messing up and they're just like, oh my gosh, we're so afraid to put something out because we don't know how it will land.

Robert Pierson: So the basic message I would give to brands is we need to profile every customer and understand who your target audience is. You need to focus on them at an individual level in order to drive that brand affinity with those customers and look at your competitors' customers too. And if you understand that and you continuously measure and manage that, then you can message them in the correct way, which will allow you to engage with them on a continuous basis. And that will allow you to weather the storm.

Priscilla McKinney: This just tells me you have to have smart people on your team because that hyper-personalization you're talking about is not easy to do. It's really easy to talk about.

Robert Pierson: It's really easy to talk about and you need good research behind it. You need to be able to understand at a core level, what are the brand affinities that your customers have and who are they associated with? And you need to make those brand affinities too. So Unilever and Nike have done a very good job in terms of promoting as a father of a young daughter. It's so important to me that getting girls into sport because now screens are taking over. There's more and more screens. The more we can get young girls outside and get them fit and healthy and doing active sports is the future of what we're doing, and then focusing on the skin and the hair and other ways. So to me, it's really important in terms of how brands engage and touching me as a consumer so that I feel that I'm empowered to then buy the brand directly.

Priscilla McKinney: Love it.

Priscilla McKinney: So Raj, Manocha, no stranger to this show, but you have something new to talk about. So give us the news.

Raj Manocha: Awesome. Yeah. So, Gydence Group started about six months ago. So we've been really trying to get this idea of agentic AI in terms of market research and how it's going to work. And so what we've been focusing on is how do you get your market research workflow to be that much more efficient? So we talk about efficiency in the industry, but we really got to get bare bones around actually what we're doing all the way from brief to end of a project. So all of our agents basically do one task to automate that part of your research process. You can actually get back to what you're supposed to be doing, consulting for the brand, being on top of your data, not in your data, and really kind of finding that voice. We always talk about seat at the table. Let's actually get one now.

Priscilla McKinney: So why did you start this? Why branch out? I mean, you and I are entrepreneurs. It's very risky. So what were you hearing in the market that you thought, oh, I've got to solve this?

Raj Manocha: I think we're at a critical juncture because of the macro things happening around us, right? So you think about OpenAI and chat, GPT, and all these places. It's become so part of our everyday. The industry has tasted a little bit of AI, but never really kind of absorbed that. And the biggest thing I've always struggled with was why don't we actually have a workflow management system in our industry? Salesforce for sales, QuickBooks for accounting. Why nothing for research? So it was the opportunity for me to figure if that's something we could do with AI now, it's very possible. And so for me, I want to be able to help industry move forward. And I think this is really gonna do that.

Priscilla McKinney: I like what you just said about the workflow. And I have to say when tech first came into market research, it was like, okay, we figured it out. Here's what you have to do. But it wasn't allowing other researchers to stay in their own workflow and to work naturally. And so tell me how AI is coming in and what you're hoping with Gydence Group that it will let people work the way they wanna work, right? This is an opportunity with the agentic AI. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Raj Manocha: So when we think about how we're coming in, we're not trying to replace the workflow, we're trying to make it more efficient or enhance it. Every one of these corporate researchers has maybe five or 10 tools they're using, whether it's a Qualtrics, a sample company, a visualization tool, but nothing connects them. So we want to play, we want to be the house, you bring your furniture, whatever that's going to look like. If we can do that, all it does is make your process the way you want it to be, but everything's going to connect together. And that's really what everyone's been craving. This idea that there's interoperability between tools, not like I got to log in here, log in here, log in here. So once that industry gets to that point, think about how much more time you're going to have as an insight professional and how much the cost is going to go down. So every one those big projects we've always been pushing out, we'll be able to do now because you'll have more money for it. We want to get back to this place of really large, heavy research. So you can actually help the brand move forward, not just day to day stuff. So this is what we're really focused on.

Priscilla McKinney: I'm really passionate about this with you. And the thing is, you're right. Other industries have this. Marketing has it. I'm a platinum hub spot shop. I've been bringing that one ring to rule them all mentality to people and saying you have to be able to dashboard. You have to be able to work in your own workflow. You have to be able to see what's going on. So I love it and I can't wait to see more from your new group.

Raj Manocha: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Priscilla McKinney: I have Nicole Mitchell here from Dynata and she had a very important presentation here at Quirks and I'd love for you to hear more about it from her.

Nicole Mitchell: So basically I talked about inclusive advertising and why it's still important and why it matters. A lot of times we think that inclusive advertising is just about diversity and showing diverse faces, but it's more than that. It's really about telling people's stories and how brands can show these stories and get consumers, make connections with consumers and enable trust. So the main point of it was really talking about being authentic and that inclusivity still matters.

Priscilla McKinney: You say that it's more than just showing diverse faces. And I think there's also a point if it's done wrong, it could break that trust. So what are your thoughts on that?

Nicole Mitchell: Yeah, so that's where research comes in, right? And things like copy testing and like post campaign research, those are things that are important. So that what is the audience thinking about? What is it that they want and making sure that your message is genuine and authentic?

Priscilla McKinney: Well, you get the tough jobs over at Dynata. So tell me a little bit about your day to day and why things end up on your desk.

Nicole Mitchell: My day to day about probably 50% of my job is doing data investigation. So that's really just kind of helping clients out when the data kind of looks wrong or something seems off. And so we try to help to figure out what's the answer to this. And then the other part of my job is doing research on research, which is one of the best parts. And that's how I got to do inclusive advertising research. And that's how Dynata really stays at the leading edge, really thinking. What do brands need to do that maybe they weren't thinking about? Or what are some of the more complicated things that they're needing?

Priscilla McKinney: Has there been anything like that that has surprised you that has come up on your desk in the last year or two? Or anything you feel is being ignored or is too complicated? Or what are some of the outliers there?

Nicole Mitchell: So one of the things that actually has surprised me is the data from inclusive advertising, the research that we did. Because of all the backlash with DEI and that thing and inclusive advertising and DEI are not the same thing, but there is that piece that's important of DEI that feeds into inclusive advertising. So one of the things about it that surprised me was that it's such a still a positive message that's important that people still care about. So despite what you may hear about the country being divided, people still care about seeing themselves represented in advertising and it's important for them for it to be authentic.

Priscilla McKinney: I love that important, important work. Thanks for sharing it.

Priscilla McKinney: I'm going to go ahead and call it and say the Pure Spectrum always has the best booth activation. So this has been super fun with the teddy bear stuffing that you're doing, but it really ties into the brand. So Nicole, please tell us a little bit about what we put inside the teddy bear that actually matters here.

Nicole Ipsen: Yes. Now, of course we have these cute little wishing stars. Each one represents our core values here at Pure Spectrum. So our blue represents simplicity, our yellow is for quality, transparency is our green wishing star and innovation is our red. So we always encourage everybody to whichever one resonates the most with you. But a lot of people say we don't want to cut corners. We want all of them. So everybody gets all the wishing stars, which is awesome. Whatever it is you want. Now I also did put a little heart inside my teddy bear. So that was a nice touch.

Priscilla McKinney: You got to have some love. I love that. So, but tell me a little bit about what you're hearing from people. Why are they coming to Pure Spectrum and choosing you above the rest?

Nicole Ipsen: Honestly, it's the Pure Spectrum experience. So, right. We bring that to every conference that we're at. It's really about connecting with people on a deeper level, whether that's just, hey, build a teddy bear with us. And this is the experience that we bring to every interaction, whether that's you're working with us in our team, whether that's you're working with us via services or you're more DIY, you're gonna get that experience across the board with everybody that you work with at Pure Spectrum.

Priscilla McKinney: I'll give you a little plug for this because you also have Pure Spectrum Connect and sometimes you're hosting a lot of people and you're bringing industry leaders together to tackle some pretty tough problems. So you guys are known for really bringing more people to the industry to say, hey, how do we work together in order to really make this a better experience, not only for other researchers, but also for the participant. And I think that's something that's really valuable from Pure Spectrum.

Nicole Ipsen: Yeah, no, we really try to be thought leaders in the space. We try to connect people to talk about those important conversations that really matter and that will help drive the industry forward for sure.

Priscilla McKinney: Maureen Evans here with Curion and I have to say Curion is known in this industry for product testing. But what do you wish people knew about your firm that maybe they haven't heard of before just because it is just such kind of a calling card for your company?

Maureen Evans: Exactly. Well, I think Curion, we do product testing, one of the best in the industries. We have a number of facilities that allow us to do that. But over the last few years, we've really grown. We have organized our offer and our teams so that we are full service and we are able to offer qual and quant solutions at each stage of development. So we have moderators that are able to own their own research with clients. And that allows us to connect the dots because instead we're not just working with sensory teams anymore. We now are working at the early stages of development, that fuzzy front end. And then we're connecting the dots for the clients as they move through their product development lifecycle to launch. So it's been a wonderful last few years to see the integration of how we can talk to different clients and really strengthen the portfolio beyond our North Star focus, which is product testing.

Priscilla McKinney: I have to say though, the reason why you are really known for product testing is you guys are really good at it. And the facilities, you just kind of breeze past that. But that is a really key part, like really setting those up properly, that tactile moment, that like aha moment people have. What do you hear back from your clients when they really see that in action?

Maureen Evans: Well, I would say first and foremost, I think they're beautiful. So when I walk in, I am just amazed and I think about the experience that the consumers have and the clients have when they go to facilities. We have about five right now and we are in the process of updating all of them. We have three verticals within our organization. So we have health, beauty and wellness. We have food and beverage, but we also have restaurants and durables. So our North Star is that every facility would have a commercial kitchen, lifestyle suites and single kitchen just for prep and heating and serving, and they're beautiful. So the clients love coming to them, and we're all really like excited to show them off.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, yeah, but see when the participants walk in and they're beautiful. They're more relaxed and then I can see how you're getting better insights from them. Okay. Now I happen to know that you're from Chicago. Here we are in New York and I've already had Carlos Hevia on this podcast and he's from Chicago and he and I both agree better food in Chicago. So I'd like for you to weigh in on that. Yes or no. Are you with us?

Maureen Evans: Well, you're three for three. Yeah. I'm born and raised in Chicago. So no hands down, but it is great food and we're not just seeing New York, but Maureen, thanks for joining me.

Priscilla McKinney: Thank you, Priscilla.

Priscilla McKinney: I'm here with Mary Kelly with MK Consulting. I've really stopped you in your tracks here as you're heading to sessions, but I'd like to hear what is your thinking about what you've heard? Has there been anything inspiring or are you listening for something you need to take back? What's going on?

Mary Kelly: I think what I'm here for is inspiration first and foremost and to hear new approaches, new ways of doing things, moving away from the status quo. I think there was a great session yesterday with RTI called On Bullshit and it was about calling out bullshit in our roles and within the industry. And that is the kind of inspiration that I was looking for coming here. And I walked out of that session in particular, really questioning some of the things I do and thinking about new ways to bring the work I do to my clients. So I think for that reason, it's great to be here and great to be around like-minded people.

Priscilla McKinney: So when you are obviously inundated with lots of vendors, how are you going through that evaluation process? Is there something in particular that a vendor here could do to stand out to you?

Mary Kelly: Well, at the end of the day, for me, vendors are people. And for me, it's about connecting with people. I think the methodologies are, for the most part, somewhat interchangeable. And I think most people can do a lot of things. Certainly there are specialists, but I'm looking for people who I trust, people with experience, people who are bringing new ideas to the table, who are creative thinkers. And to me, it's really about making those personal connections.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, obviously we know too, you like people who call out bullshit, so.

Mary Kelly: I do. I really, that's a requirement for me.

Priscilla McKinney: I love it. I hope the rest of the sessions are awesome for you. Thank you very much.

Priscilla McKinney: I'm here with Lindsey Bartlett, my good friends. Yes, she's all, that's me. We're enjoying ourselves at Quirks here and we had dinner last night, but Lindsey is with Smith-Hanley Associates and she really works in getting people in the right place at the right time. So tell us about that.

Lindsey Bartlett: Yeah, it's an executive search, which is incredible. I think the best part of what I do is just connecting people in places where they have good cultures and they can stay for a long time and really like absorb those types of environments. It's been positive.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, you and your team, I gotta say the three of you, Daniel, Pearson and you, it's like always a joy when I see you walking together. But what's interesting is you come from a bigger group, but the three of you really focus on the market research industry. So why is it important to find someone who really knows this industry when you're looking for that really critical role within market research? Why do you need an expert like your team?

Lindsey Bartlett: Well, I think it depends. I mean, because maybe about half of our client base are brands. So internal insights function. So it's absolutely pivotal to have the industry expertise, be able to run that show. But then on the other side, research companies, all different types of roles for operations, but most importantly, sales positions, because you need to have the knowledge and the wherewithal to really understand who you need to target, why research is important, and understanding the basic fundamentals of how much it actually impacts brands at the end of the day.

Priscilla McKinney: Okay, I'm gonna put the screws to you on this question. I'm telling you people kind of poo poo recruiting and say, oh, but there's LinkedIn, I can do it myself. Okay, why is that not a good idea?

Lindsey Bartlett: I mean, it is. If you have a position where you can put an ad up and you want to sort through a bunch of people and maybe talk to a few, that's great. The active candidate is certainly a great candidate, especially in this marketplace, right? There's a lot of active talent right now. But I think what makes us a little bit different is we network for a living and we have a lot of passive talent, people that just want to hear from us about jobs. They're not necessarily looking, they're not going to apply. They're not talking to people about it. They're just talking to us about it. And there is a little bit of that bias. If you really want someone great, find someone who is already employed. I'm sure that's not fair to people who are let go and it's no fault of their own. And they are looking at, there are really great candidates out there, but it is, there's that interesting human element in the whole thing.

Priscilla McKinney: So what's something that you wish people who were looking for a job, looking to get placed, what do you wish they knew or what's something they can do to prep themselves better to be able to be connected to the right position at the right time.

Lindsey Bartlett: I think it's important to just really find and own your own personal brand and expertise and stop being a generalist that can do everything. And once you have that ownership and you put on your resume exactly what it is that you want to do, what you're good at, that'll shine through a little bit better than saying that you're a jack of all trades and can do anything you need.

Priscilla McKinney: Okay, you need to connect with Lindsey Bartlett. Find her on LinkedIn in the show notes. You'll find the link. You'll love her. She's just a gem. Thanks.

Lindsey Bartlett: Thanks Priscilla.

Priscilla McKinney: I'm here with Kira Greenberg from Pernod Ricard. And I'm a big fan of two brands that you work on, Jameson and Glenlivet. Let's hear it. So we've had a good time talking. We have not been drinking, which is really unfortunate, I know one day, one day we've been in a lot of sessions. So I'm curious, what have you heard that maybe surprised you or has got you thinking a little bit differently about your job?

Kira Greenberg: Yeah, good question. Obviously, the moment is all about AI and talking about how to make our systems faster in a lot of ways. And I think one thing that really got me thinking was one vendor who was talking about running a segmentation really like based on open ends and encoding emotion instead of very traditional quant. And there were different ways that they pulled AI into the process, but it wasn't like an AI based segmentation by any means. And I am just so intrigued by the ways that we can bring humanness into things that we're not currently necessarily bringing humanness in. And that the way that they were talking about it was also super efficient and interesting because normally with a segmentation, you have to run a quant segmentation and then you also have to build out personas. But because this was based on the persona element, you kind of get the texture that you need with the quantitative as well. So I thought that was really interesting.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, that is interesting because it kind of puts you where, okay, I still have to do my job, still have to do the same things I need to do, but can I think about it a little bit differently? And this is something I'm hearing a lot. How do I keep that human in the loop and really keep that focus on the consumer and say, what is changing about them and how can I get a little bit deeper about what they're thinking and they're feeling because that's going to lead to a better decision. So that's really interesting. Okay, but you're a New Yorker. So a lot of us are coming here and trying to enjoy ourselves. What do you think people should do that people miss in New York?

Kira Greenberg: Well, as a former theater kid, I'm never going to say no to theater. So I think like if you're not here for all that long, rush a show or go to the TKTS line. It's summer now, which means Shakespeare in the park in Central Park, which is awesome. And also I would absolutely always explore different boroughs as well. Queens and Brooklyn are the best.

Priscilla McKinney: I'm just meeting Kelsey Whitehead from Panoplai, but honestly, we've met at a wire event. It was very crowded and a little bit crazy, but it's great to see you over here at Panoplai. I'm a huge fan. I have to say a lot of my audience has listened to things from Neil, from Adam about what you're doing. It's very exciting, but life right now is pretty complicated looking at voice and consumer. So tell me from your experience what you do at Panoplai that really takes that very complex and simplifies it.

Kelsey Whitehead: Yeah, definitely. I guess what I've done most recently has been do a parallel test. So we're working on synthetic data to really try and extend the life of participants and past research that you have. And so what we're doing is really running a test with real humans versus what the AI is saying and kind of comparing those results. And so it's been really exciting to see percentage-wise how close these results actually are and really help our clients determine where to use this synthetic solution. So it's not about replacing the existing market research, but helping you to get insights faster and helping you to make decisions quickly with data that you already have. You don't need to every time go and ask new people. You probably have that answer across your data sets and if you merge them together.

Priscilla McKinney: That's really important because you work for some large brands, people have heard of them, Sprout Social, HubSpot, Google, et cetera, et cetera. And these are companies that do have their own data. So you're not saying, oh, we're just starting and we're just making it up out of the air. You're saying companies who have really rich first-party data then can really maximize what they have and optimize their knowledge by coming back and enriching the data from this. So one thing I know, we joke around that Adam is the digital twin guy. He can have that name, that's fine. But how are you doing that when you're saying you're enriching it and you're looking at synthetic and saying, can we extend that life of the participant? What are some questions people are asking?

Kelsey Whitehead: So it's really about connecting the data across the different sources that you have. So you might have reviews, you might have transcripts, you might have research reports, things that could just be sitting on a shelf or in an isolated database. And it's really about connecting those in order to help you answer questions. So that could be as simple as how would my audience respond to this new idea or concept? And you might not want to reveal it to the larger population just yet. So you can kind of get a simulated answer of how people feel about it based on what you already know about your existing consumers.

Priscilla McKinney: Love it. It's so intriguing and I love having the conversation with the whole team. So good to hear from you too. Thanks so much Priscilla.

Priscilla McKinney: I have Kathy Cheng here with inca and I have a question for you about empathy. Where does empathy come into play when we're dealing with AI?

Kathy Cheng: That's a really great question. I think with AI, a lot of people think it's machine. It doesn't have empathy. That actually puts more emphasis on the importance of empathy. At least at inca, what we do is, for example, we make sure that we have empathy for our participants to make sure that they have a good experience and to have empathy for our researchers to make sure that they can use the data, their life is easier and easy. I think the other part that we increasingly pay more and more attention to is how AI and human work together. We believe that we should have empathy for AI as well. Sometimes we think, oh, AI isn't doing this. AI is just a machine. It's not smart enough to do what we want them to do. So if we have empathy, if we try to be more empathetic to really understand the under the hood view of how AI thinks, processes the information, we have a better chance at the end for us to use AI more effectively.

Priscilla McKinney: Oh, I have not had someone like turn the tables on that idea of empathy with AI. So that is super interesting. But I do see you around the world at a lot of different conferences. We're here in New York. Is there something in particular that you love about coming to New York or is there something you like to do in New York?

Kathy Cheng: New York is such a wonderful place. You can just do so many different things. Whenever we come to New York, we do want to, it's an opportunity for us to get together as a team and then see a lot of familiar faces. That's the human element of what we do. So it's a good opportunity to bring that front and center.

Priscilla McKinney: I'm here with Jocelyn Simon from NailBiter. And I have to say the session yesterday was amazing with Pepsi and you've worked with Pepsi for a lot of years. And I have to say Brody Dunn, pretty funny from the stage and really willing to talk about failure. So tell me a little bit about that presentation yesterday because I think it was so key about what is really at the forefront of market research right now.

Jocelyn Simon: Yeah. And I think what wasn't said in the presentation that's so important to this story is that we started testing innovation post-launch for Pepsi probably in 2019 with some of our first work with them. So it really has been an evolution over six years really to get to this point where they finally said, okay, we know that your metrics work. They help us understand what we need to know early in the launch process. Let's systematize this thing. Let's put a framework together and just get smarter about how we're launching innovations, whether it's failure, whether it's success, like we need to know what's working, what's not so we can ultimately get better and stop just throwing stuff out there and then moving on to the next innovation. Brody was very transparent about that process with us when he came to us. He's like, that's how Frito innovates. He's like, okay, this one's in market, let's move on to the next one. It's just not sustainable. So being open to failure is really how you succeed. And that's what the underpinning goal of all of this. So yeah, it's been a really successful partnership, but mostly because they're open to that failure.

Priscilla McKinney: Well, they spend so much money getting a product to market. And then it wasn't that strange to hear that they wanted post launch check-ins. But one thing he said in the presentation I found really interesting, he was like, yeah, after launch, a year after launch, two years after launch. And it was like, it kind of opened up my eyes thinking, even some products that are succeeding for them, he was kind of like, yeah, but are they succeeding as much as they can? It's about that optimization. So how do video metrics come in and give them that data to be able to optimize products that have already been in development and have already been out on the shelf?

Jocelyn Simon: Yeah, I love that you don't think it's strange at all. I don't think it's strange at all. Frito now doesn't think it's strange at all to measure after the fact. But like hindsight is 20-20. Like looking back, we're like, okay, we're so glad we did this. We have data in hand when stakeholders and leadership are coming to us with questions on why these innovations aren't performing. But traditional innovation processes don't have a stage gate after launch. It's all about hitting the packaging, KPIs, hitting the product that tastes perceptions. But it's really a shame that like most innovation processes in this industry just don't have that like beyond sales data, of course, a measure after the fact that we need to be hitting around. Okay. Are we getting the notice rates that we want at shelf? Are we getting, yeah, of course there's ways to get intent or repeat, but we don't really get all the color and reasons behind that. So that's where I think Frito has been really forward thinking and saying we want to have this data in hand when we start to get questions, not just from internal stakeholders, but from retailers. Hey, we're going to delist this thing if we don't get some answers on, do you guys expect it to, can we improve performance or is this the dud? And I think that's what's really been able to fill a gap for Frito and why these measures are so important for them now. But I think you pointed out something very interesting. It's not a typical part of the innovation life cycle, hindsight's 20-20. It's so easy to now look back and say like, we have this data, now we can make good decisions off of it. A lot of companies though are making decisions post launch without data that isn't just sales data. Making decisions on just numbers is fine, but without all the reasons why and maybe that's something you can actually fix, you don't have to delist it and start over, right?

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah, that starting over is incredibly expensive. So it was fun to hear him poke fun at their own process and also their own thinking and saying what we didn't see when we were launching really came out only once it was already on shelf and we could hear and see what the shopper was doing in the moment. Some of those videos during the presentation were so powerful, hearing what the actual consumer was saying, why they were actually taking things out of their cart and replacing them.

Jocelyn Simon: Well, the Doritos example is interesting because I remember he said they pushed really hard to get tangy golden sriracha in any color besides red. Red cues spicy. And that was the problem. That video that we saw a woman standing five feet from the shelf, all she can see is red lettering, it's gonna cue a spicy note. Where their whole concept around gold and sriracha is that it's sweet and tangy, it's not spicy. And that was, he was saying, we literally chopped off, what was like a third of our consumer base just going into market because we chose red lettering instead of gold. And that was like an internal debate. But having videos like that allows you to go back and say, here you go, this is what we're seeing.

Priscilla McKinney: Yeah, it's not a feeling. Here's the data, here's the video. And it is true when you see those videos. They're actually saying something. They're looking at stuff. They're moving around. They're taking things in their car, taking it out, looking up the shelf, looking down the shelf. It really is a pretty powerful moment. So, well, thanks Jocelyn and awesome presentation. Keep up the great work with Pepsi.

Jocelyn Simon: Of course. Thanks, Priscilla.

Priscilla McKinney: I'm here with David Dick with Dynata and I'm just telling you last year, you were right. I did take this jacket right off your back and it's a fantastic sequin jacket and you really have to be here to appreciate it, but I appreciate the flair. But let's talk a little bit about Dynata because pretty epic, world's largest first party panel provider. So that's something already, but you all have introduced something called the quality score proprietary way of actually looking for data quality. So tell me a little bit about that.

David Dick: So data quality score is our proprietary AI and machine learning technology. And what it does, it detects patterns of behavior to prevent fraud before it becomes fraud.

Priscilla McKinney: So is that also before it becomes fraud, meaning before you even sell that panel to someone else?

David Dick: Yeah, so what we're doing is we're looking at all the different data points and before it even gets to cleaning, before you even get the data, we're trying to this to prevent it. So we're gonna flag it as it happens. So you won't even see it. So we're gonna get the quality data you expect. You won't see anything else behind the scenes because we're finding it as it happens.

Priscilla McKinney: Okay, and I'm going to come back a little bit later and talk with some people on your team about what you talked about because it was a very interesting presentation yesterday. But tell me about the conversations here. What are people asking for? Why are they coming to Dynata?

David Dick: Yeah, I think you're hearing all the same buzzwords, AI, machine learning, quality, fraud, all those different words, the same things that we're hearing too as well. And we're trying to stay on top of it as well.

Priscilla McKinney: So we're here in New York. What is one of the things you like to do when you're in New York? I mean, have you got a hot dog yet? I mean, what's the situation, okay?

David Dick: It's funny being in market research, I should know better and I shouldn't be surprised. But as soon as I get on my phone and get on Facebook, I'm now getting tagged with all the New York, oh, you gotta go to this play and this show and this show and this thing. And I'm like, I should know this, but I saw like one of the Michael Jackson event, looks kind of fun. So maybe I'll check on one of those shows or I gotta see something, right? So I think that's what I'm gonna do.

Priscilla McKinney: Okay, if you go to the Michael Jackson show, please wear that jacket, okay?

David Dick: I have to. People get a discount, who knows?

Priscilla McKinney: Well, you might get a discount. You also might get called on stage to do a little number.