Bridging the Impact Gap with the Agency-Brand Partnership with Nick Graham

[00:00:05] Nick Graham: When we did partner day at Mondelez, one of the questions from the agency partners was, how do you want us to operate differently? One of the things that I said is, look, the, this model of you all coming to me as the corporate side, and we can do this, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. We have this data set, we have this data set.

[00:00:25] Nick Graham: I said, think this is broken because all you’re doing is particularly in the new, you know, the new world of proliferating data and, and you know, multiple different ways into solutions. I said, that doesn’t really solve my problem. 

[00:00:36] MRII Announcer: Welcome  MRII’s Insights and Innovators podcast, where we talk to top market research professionals to get their inside stories about innovative and enduring best practices.

[00:00:47] MRII Announcer: Now here’s your host for today’s episode. 

[00:00:50] Stan Sthanunathan: Welcome to today’s episode. Bridging the insights impact gap. I’m your host, Stan Sthanunathan. Today [00:01:00] I’m joined by Nick Graham, the founder of advisory firm Vertemis, and a longtime insights leader who previously led global insights and analytics at really large corporations like Mondelez.

[00:01:14] Stan Sthanunathan: And before that, he was head of North American Insights and Analytics at PepsiCo. Now as an advisor to both brands and agencies, nix brings a rare, dual perspective and a candid take on why so many insights partnerships fall short of their potential. In this conversation, we explore where the disconnect happens, what both sides can do differently, and how we can evolve towards a more strategic business impacting model for insights.

[00:01:48] Stan Sthanunathan: So without much a do. Let’s dive in. Nick, thank you for joining us today. In this podcast, you led insights in two large global powerhouses. Now you [00:02:00] advise both agencies and clients, uh, how was tipping outside the client role? Change your perspective on what makes insights impactful. 

[00:02:12] Nick Graham: Well, good to see you again, Stan.

[00:02:13] Nick Graham: Thanks for inviting me, uh, to be part of today’s podcast. Yeah, I’ve been, because I’ve been thinking about it a lot since, uh, I stepped outta side of my corporate role last year. I think, you know, I think, to be honest, the fundamentals of how, of what I think about how insights made impact hasn’t changed.

[00:02:32] Nick Graham: It is still, it’s still the core of, uh, of what I believe and I think, um. I think a lot of the things that are surfacing to me are things that I’ve sort of known for a long time. I think the difference is now, now that I’m sitting outside my corporate role, I guess I have a lot more clarity because when you’re in, as you know, right, when you’re in a corporate job.

[00:02:51] Nick Graham: You, you’re fighting fires every single day. And even though you know the problems and the tensions that you’re seeing, whether it’s how the team is structured, [00:03:00] the fact that you’re drowning in dashboards that you don’t need, uh, the fact that you’re getting pulled into lots of things that should be self-serve and automated and all of that sort, even though you know all of that, your ability.

[00:03:12] Nick Graham: To challenge that is just get sucked up in all the other stuff that you need to get done, right? So you pick a few big battles that you want to fight. Um, I think also the thing I realized is on the corporate side, you feel like you are probably the only person, not the only person with this problem, but you sort of feel like you’re the only person with this problem, right?

[00:03:32] Nick Graham: You think because you know, either you go to conferences or you have consultants in who are telling you that everybody else is further ahead than you, and you know. Or Unilever or Mondelez or whoever it is, whoever you don’t work for have already got this already sorted, or that’s what your sort of feeling is.

[00:03:48] Nick Graham: And I think stepping out of it, you realize that not only does everybody have similar, similar challenges and similar problems, not just in CPG, but beyond, but I think also that. I think [00:04:00] stepping outta that corporate role, I also have a lot more appreciation for our, our agency partners. What they can bring to the table, the gaps, the disconnects that they see.

[00:04:10] Nick Graham: Um, and I guess how much more impact we can have together. I had a little bit of a sense of it ’cause in about my last. Last year and a bit at Mondelez, we tried to really reset the relationships with our partners. So we did a few partner days where we, uh, explicitly asked partners to come and tell us what they saw going wrong, what they saw as the opportunities, where they saw that we could make a bigger impact as an insights team, but also where they could help and vice versa, what we needed more from them.

[00:04:41] Nick Graham: And I think being now on this side, I sort of see much more clearly. The opportunities for us to work very differently internally and with partners in order to be able to make bigger impact. So it just sort of feels to me that the old models, both internally and externally just aren’t really working for [00:05:00] anybody to help anybody anymore.

[00:05:02] Nick Graham: And I guess now I’m stepping out the corporate role A, I can talk about it a bit more easily, but also I can sort of see it a lot more clearly that the, it feels like the model is. A little broken in the way that it has been operating the last probably 30, 40 years. 

[00:05:17] Stan Sthanunathan: You, you always said Dick, that you know it, uh, the breakdown happens on both sides sometimes on the branch side.

[00:05:24] Stan Sthanunathan: Yeah, because they don’t frame the business needs clearly. And sometimes on the agency side. Where, where they missed the, uh, mark in terms of, you know, how they respond and so on. Can you share some specific examples from real life on where you think, you know, the brands got it wrong and where you think the agencies got it wrong?

[00:05:44] Nick Graham: Yeah, and it’s, and as you say, it’s a, it’s a, it’s definitely a two way street because, but I do think fundamentally, and it’s funny, there’s, um. It was a LinkedIn post today about this, about the importance of the brief and really nailing the business problem, not just like the research question or whatever, [00:06:00] or the analytics question and how critical that is.

[00:06:03] Nick Graham: I’d say we’ve got all guilty. Corporate side and agency side of rushing over that way too quickly. Like, so we’ll either rush to, we often just rush to what’s the methodology, what’s the, you know, what analytical approach do we need? What model do we need? What research approach are we gonna take? Because a, that’s something we’re all usually quite excited about and quite interested in.

[00:06:21] Nick Graham: And usually because the business is rushing to get to an answer, so we sort of like go, oh, well, we’ll sort of work it out. We sort of know what we’re trying to solve for. Let’s just start going. Mm. But to me, that’s usually where all goes wrong. Um, so a good, a good example of this. We did, um. A snacking set of occasions, a, a build on demand spaces that we did.

[00:06:39] Nick Graham: Um, it was trying to understand, you know, very familiar to your new world. We’re trying to understand where the shape of demand was going in future, right? So what, again, the shape of demand is, is similar, like why people snack, what are the occasions and moments? There’s some dynamism in it, but the bigger change is have people satisfy that, right?

[00:06:59] Nick Graham: What attributes are [00:07:00] they looking for? What ingredients, et cetera, et cetera. So we had. We had a big push from our internal stakeholders, r and d strategy, innovation team, that we needed this. Um, we had an agency partner lined up, and I think to me it was a classic example of, it was led by, there was a meeting, this was probably February, there was a meeting in May that we needed to hit.

[00:07:26] Nick Graham: The whole set of dynamics there about. That’s kind of crazy. But anyway, there’s a meeting that we needed to hit, but you know, that’s, that’s typically how the ca how it works, right? There’s a, there’s a, there’s a deadline we’re working towards, yeah, there’s a deadline we’re working towards. Because everyone was rushing to get the project underway.

[00:07:41] Nick Graham: We did not spend enough time as an internal team between those stakeholders really bottoming out what is this for? What do we want to use it for? What decisions will we take off of the back of it? Um. What’s nice to know versus sort of just what’s [00:08:00] really nice to know versus what is absolutely critical to know.

[00:08:02] Nick Graham: And so we just, we wasted ultimately, I think a lot of time, in particular some money, but a lot of time in the backend because we were, we were hunting for everything, right? So we had this a, we had our agency partner go out and, and pull in a lot of additional information that we probably didn’t need. Yet at the end, what we had was something that was extremely comprehensive, but wasn’t very actionable because we hadn’t been precise upfront about what actionable looked like.

[00:08:30] Nick Graham: And so, to me, this is in a good, it was a good example. It was a sort of like hit your head and you know, hit your face afterwards. Like face, pardon me. And like, really, did we allow this to happen? That we got to that point and then it was this huge, um. Uh, sprint at the end to try and get to something that was sort of actionable and usable for that meeting.

[00:08:49] Nick Graham: But where it, so there’s a big, a big part of that lay on the internal corporate side, but it also lay with our agency partner who I wish had [00:09:00] challenged us harder on. What actually do you want it to be able to do with this? Because we can go in a thousand different directions, but what, what, you know, paint a picture for us of what you’re gonna do coming outta this.

[00:09:12] Nick Graham: Like, yes, you go to a meeting, you look smart and you’ve got, you know, you know, charts which show where attributes are going, you. What actually decision are you gonna take after that? And I think we needed to be pressured and challenged more, um, to be clearer on that before we started work. And I think because we didn’t do that, I mean, we ended up in an okay place, but it was a lot more painful and a lot more time and cost inefficient than it should have been for us to get there.

[00:09:38] Stan Sthanunathan: That, that’s, that’s a beautiful articulation of, you know, a what went wrong and what could have, uh, been done differently to get to a outcome. Now, you know, having now been on the, uh, other side, you know, rather than a corporate side. Uh, if you had a way and you could redesign how brands and agencies work together, [00:10:00] how would you do it?

[00:10:01] Stan Sthanunathan: How would it look like? 

[00:10:04] Nick Graham: Yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good question. I think, um, there’s, so when we did the, um, partner day at Mondelez, it was one of the big conversations of not, not exactly redesigning it, but how one of the questions from the agency partners was, how do you want us to operate differently?

[00:10:23] Nick Graham: One of the things that I said is, look, the, this model of you all coming to me as the, from the corporate side and with like, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this, we can do this. We have this data set, we have this data set. I said to me, this is broken because all you’re doing is particularly in the new, you know, the new world of proliferating data and, and you know, multiple different ways into solutions.

[00:10:47] Nick Graham: I said, that doesn’t really solve my problem. I know you all want to be the catchall solution, but the reality is. In this environment, none of you’re a catchall solution. I’m gonna need multiple solutions. And so I said, first and foremost, I [00:11:00] guess part of my answer to this is I think we just need to acknowledge that we need to acknowledge that partners, uh, corporates are gonna choose select partners, but they’re gonna need multiple partners in order to be able to solve data partners, research partners to be able to solve, um, the problems that they have.

[00:11:15] Nick Graham: So we need to be comfortable with a multi sort of agency environment. Mm-hmm. And then my ask to my agency partners was. I need you to act like partners to each other and to me, and to acknowledge where your swim lanes are, to acknowledge where your roads are. I don’t want you fighting with each other because that doesn’t help anybody.

[00:11:33] Nick Graham: It doesn’t help us all get to a common cause. I know that is antithetical. To how you’ve all been taught to operate, but that’s not, that’s not helpful way to operate. Now, again, I’ll take a bet as a corporate on maybe six of you or 10 of you instead of a hundred of you, but I mainly you to operate, operate differently, so it becomes less, um, less transactional, less everybody fighting over every single project.

[00:11:57] Nick Graham: And it’s interesting. It, it was [00:12:00] a big. I was just very honest to how I was feeling about my frustration. But it was interesting. We had a few partners come up, um, in the break and say, actually this is. This is actually revelation and help helping us think very differently about how we can operate. And actually one of the things that a lot of them ask for at the end of the day is, is can you just tell us who do you want to use for what?

[00:12:21] Nick Graham: And tell us what our swim lanes are. And okay, we might not agree with it, but just be honest with us. Like, where do you want us to play? What do you think we’re good at? What do you not think we’re good at? And you’re not gonna hurt our feelings. Just tell us where we, because then we can focus all of our energy on that and tell us where we need to.

[00:12:33] Nick Graham: Partner with another agency and just be very explicit and transparent with us about what you want us to do, where we start, where we end, where you want us to partner. Mm-hmm. And to me, I dunno, we’d ever really, I, I’d never had a sort of really grown up conversation with our, with our vendor partners about that.

[00:12:50] Nick Graham: So I think over the next year that I was at Mondelez, we started to change the dynamics a bit. And I think it. It, we started to have [00:13:00] better conversations with our partners about, you know, I want you to be, I don’t want you to be an executor here. I want you to be a thought leader. So our relationship dynamic is gonna change as a result of that.

[00:13:11] Nick Graham: Um, so I think, I don’t know if the whole answer, but I think that that dynamic, um, really started to help us rethink how we were gonna, how we wanted to operate. I think the thing also happened helped to be honest. Was having, um, what we took, what we started to build after those agency days as well, is in addition to the typical JBP process that we’d have with our big partners, we started to say what were, what were our shared values?

[00:13:40] Nick Graham: Like, how did we want to behave with one another and how, essentially, what was our contract to one another about how we operated, how we behaved, how we dealt with issues. Because I feel like, you know, we all have. There KPIs we have like, but again, they’re often very transactional KPIs and so we started to add into that, um, [00:14:00] measures of.

[00:14:01] Nick Graham: Satisfied we were with, with one another, not just a client with agency partner, how we were delivering against transparency, how we were delivering against collaboration, like some of the key principles that we’d outlined. And I think, yeah, I don’t say we got all the way there by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it changed the tenor of the conversation and it made it feel more of a two-way mutual responsibility for building this relationship, not just a.

[00:14:28] Nick Graham: Agency is Right, or, or, you know, client is right. 

[00:14:31] Stan Sthanunathan: So when you talked about that, you know, you, you gave Mm, a really good insight into how agency partners need to behave with each other to bring value addition to the client side. But flipping it the other way, what should the client do differently? Because it takes two to tango, I’m sure.

[00:14:52] Stan Sthanunathan: Totally. It’s not just agencies who are at fault, you know, sometimes clients, no, quite, yeah. So what do we need to [00:15:00] do? Plenty as clients? 

[00:15:01] Nick Graham: Completely. No, and again, I think a big part of when we, we had this, these agency days was. I, I had a team go out beforehand and ask our agency partners feedback on us and say like, all the things that we did badly or could do better, because I do think it’s, it’s a relationship, right?

[00:15:19] Nick Graham: It’s a relationship on both sides. Um, and I, I would want my agency partners, well, I knew we have agency partners that are engaged. They feel valued. They understand your business. They feel part of your team. Mm-hmm. They will. Go much further for you. They will do things, they will, they will do much more in the relationship.

[00:15:40] Nick Graham: Mm. Uh, and you’ll both get more out of it. Um, it’s not just about how, I dunno, the money cares matters for them as, as much as it matters for us. But it’s not just about that, it’s also about the relationship you’re building. So I do think that one of the things we talked about, um, on the, the, the partner day was.

[00:15:59] Nick Graham: As, as [00:16:00] client side partners, we needed to be, um, much more honest and transparent with our, with our agency partners, like being honest about, you know, you know, when. I empathize when agency partners don’t get pieces of work is we often fob them off with like, oh, you know, you were second, but there was this other partner who did, you know, slightly bad, blah, blah, blah.

[00:16:20] Nick Graham: You know, the, you know, classic, like, classic uh uh, feedback. I think what, so one of the things we promised is clear, transparent, a criteria that we’re gonna measure people that we would, would we assign a piece of work on, and then really honest feedback to them about why, why they didn’t get it. Like if it was a bad price, if it was about how they showed up, if it was about servicing, because we owe them that, right?

[00:16:41] Nick Graham: I mean the and I, we got this feedback. Um. In the, the listening exercise we did, you know, we were criticized for the fact that we’ll often do an RFP or an RFI, we’ll put agency through all of this work and then nothing. You know, we maybe tell them they didn’t get it, but we [00:17:00] don’t go back to them. They, the huge amount of time and energy they put into something and we owe that back.

[00:17:04] Nick Graham: Like, again, if you want a good relationship, you’ve gotta give something back into it as well. Yeah. So I think a big part of it was about that honesty and transparency, clarity on the role you want us to play. Again, like if we want to be, you know, do we want, in some cases we wanted them to act more as a data provider.

[00:17:22] Nick Graham: In other cases, we wanted them act as a thought partner, just being honest and transparent so that we, everyone was clear what the ask was. I think that was a, as a really big part of it. The other thing that came up consistently, and I think it links into the shift that’s needed on the, the client side as well, is.

[00:17:40] Nick Graham: Tell us really what’s going on in the business, right? We can only be as good, we can only do a good job if you open the curtain a little bit and really sort of tell us what’s going on, what the problem is, what the business question is, not just at the moment when you need the brief, but, um, you know, in our monthly quarterly JBP meetings, like.

[00:17:59] Nick Graham: [00:18:00] Just give us some context. You know, we’ve signed a mutual NDA, so give us some context about what’s actually happening in the business, what the frustrations are, what the fears are, what people are talking about, because then we can be more proactive as agency partners, we can bring you ideas, we can help shape our problems.

[00:18:16] Nick Graham: We can, we can respond much more effectively to your briefs if we’ve got that context. Hmm. And I think sometimes both the Pepsi and Leys, I saw it. We have a sort of tendency to. Hold some of that back. And of course not everything we can share and they understand that, but we’ve sort of hold some of that back.

[00:18:33] Nick Graham: And again, I found when you were transparent and open, you just got a much better response and a much better relationship. And ultimately, particularly if you’re doing say a piece of research, a piece of analytics together. My biggest frustration was always like you get it back from the agency partner and didn’t really answer your question, but maybe hadn’t told them what the question was.

[00:18:53] Nick Graham: So just being very transparent, like, this is the business question, I’m gonna have to go answer. Mm. So here it is. I’m not expecting you to answer it a hundred [00:19:00] percent, but if you can get me to 80%, that makes everybody’s life better and in riches there. Their work as well, right. To be able to do that. So that transparency in that, um, I guess clarity on what the business problem is.

[00:19:12] Nick Graham: And I think that last piece to me at least. Plays into a big part about where insights needs to scale up as a, as an internal team, which is that sort of business acumen. Mm-hmm. Um, and you know, you and I have talked about this before, right? Which is that commercial fluency, um, being able to really understand what the business is looking for.

[00:19:31] Nick Graham: Mm-hmm. Um, to build, to frame up. Therefore, what’s the right research and analytics question. I think that’s a big, that’s a big, uh, do different or double, uh, double down, I should say, as we move forward. 

[00:19:44] Stan Sthanunathan: So, you know, we, we all, uh, do a pretty decent job of, you know, delivering insights, but then insight is not necessarily strategy.

[00:19:53] Stan Sthanunathan: There is that X factor that takes it from Yeah. Strategy. Uh, and it’s both a question of, [00:20:00] you know, mindset as well as skillset. Mm-hmm. So from your perspective, what is it that we need to do more of to actually make a leap from insights to strategy? 

[00:20:13] Nick Graham: It’s a good question. I think. I think you’re right. I think there’s a, it’s both mindset and skillset.

[00:20:20] Nick Graham: So let’s start with mindset. I think part of it is how we think, and I guess I think I would say this is true on the enterprise side as well as on the agency side. Like I think it, I think it starts with who we think we are and what we think our job ultimately is. And too often I still see, and I still hear from.

[00:20:41] Nick Graham: Insights, teams, agency partners, you know, we are, we are the voice of the consumer. We’re the voice of the shopper. We’re here to deliver, you know, really deep understanding. I’m not saying that’s wrong. But there’s a So what That’s missing from that. ’cause we’re not there just as like an ivory tower to say, ah, this is what the consumer has said.

[00:20:58] Nick Graham: Fantastic. Amazing. [00:21:00] Thank goodness. But we’re here. We’re here both on both sides. Because the business wants to grow, right? Or whoever it is that we’re working for, they need to change or nudge, shopper or cons. Consumer shopper behavior in a particular direction. They want to grow their business. They want to make the category bigger, they want to get more.

[00:21:18] Nick Graham: I mean, there’s a, there’s a business goal and we should stop being so, um, precious about it and accept that that is ultimately what we’re here, we’re here to bring that insight to serve a commercial purpose. And I think where I see that mindset shift is on. Again, both on the agency side, on the enterprise side is when people go, when people, when teams recognize that they are.

[00:21:42] Nick Graham: Insight driven growth owners, their job is to help the business drive growth. They do it by bringing insight into the consumer and the shopper. They are not researchers. They’re not analysts. Like, yes, that might be how they, that might be their superpower. That might be what they bring, but that’s not their ultimate role and not their [00:22:00] ultimate deliverable.

[00:22:01] Nick Graham: And they do think that is a 

[00:22:02] Stan Sthanunathan: Yeah, 

[00:22:03] Nick Graham: exactly. It’s a means to. It’s a means to an end, and I think that is a big. Mindset shift. ’cause I know when, um, you know, I’ve run lots of visioning sessions for teams, both, you know, in my old job and in, in this, this, uh, freelance role. And it’s a. While everybody says it, I think it’s a big prompt.

[00:22:21] Nick Graham: It’s a big aha moment when people sort of reframe it like that. Or actually, my job is to help the business unlock growth opportunities and I’m doing it through this, you know, as you say, it’s a means to an end. But that’s a very different way of thinking. So, you know, we are really, we should think of ourselves as, um.

[00:22:40] Nick Graham: The, the fuel of that as opposed to just the, you know, the data engine or the research. It’s something anyone wants to think that’s what their job is. But I think somehow sometimes we end up, we end up sort of either acting like that or allowing other people to perceive us in that way. When actually I think we, you know, that reframe is important and then, you know, [00:23:00] the mindset shift is one thing.

[00:23:01] Nick Graham: But as you say, I think then the other thing is the, the skillset that comes with that. So. Having curiosity about how the business makes money, right. So, and again, I don’t often see e people on either side. Um, the enterprise side or the agency side asking questions about. How does the business make profits?

[00:23:22] Nick Graham: Um, like which are your most profitable, uh, products or, uh, markets like trying to understand the mechanics of how the business makes money, who makes decisions in the organization? So the sort of the mechanics of how the business operates, how it makes money, what matters to. Finance, supply chain sales, your, you know, your CFO, like, you know, not just maybe your direct stakeholders, but the, all of the stakeholders that are driving, um, growth decisions.

[00:23:52] Nick Graham: So I think that curiosity and therefore that ability to then start to frame things in the language of the business. So being [00:24:00] able to talk. I’m gonna talk like A CFO, but to talk more like A CFO, right? To be able to, yeah. A, a good example of this was, I remember we were presenting brand equity to our CFO in the US and when I was at Pepsi and, you know, we took him through the model and he was like, okay.

[00:24:18] Nick Graham: Yeah. He is like, I get it, I get it. And logical. So I just have one small question. Um, you showed the, you know, a top two box preference for. Brand Pepsi or whatever it was that increased. He is like, why do I care? Like, what’s, what Does it matter? Does it, does it mean my pricing power has gone up? Does it mean, um, that we’re gonna make more money?

[00:24:44] Nick Graham: Does it mean like, what does it mean? What does it actually mean in things that I should care about? And I remember the team. Were was really a very different dynamic on the team and how they reacted to it. But I could see they were really shocked by this question [00:25:00] that this, and I was like, but it’s perfectly obvious, like again, that’s how we need to frame up all the work we do because as much as as interesting is it, is that we got that we learned that.

[00:25:10] Nick Graham: This innovation was better than this or that, you know, this concept when reframed in this way went from A to B or that, you know, this attribute or this flavor ingredient is really interesting. So what, as Elizabeth O says, interesting, you know, interesting. Does not make an insights department. I mean, we’ve gotta be like, what’s the impact?

[00:25:27] Nick Graham: Does it mean we can make this much more money? Does it mean that this thing will stick in market for 12 months, not six months? Like we need to turn it into something that’s material ultimately for a commercial decision maker. And I think that. To close it back to where you started. It is, it starts, I think from a mindset shift, but then I think you have to back it up with the right, um, acumen and story, commercial storytelling skills to make it impactful.

[00:25:53] Stan Sthanunathan: You been on the block for some time, uh, and if you have to, I dunno if that’s a compliment. Uh, you know, I [00:26:00] think I’ve been on the block longer, so I You can, that’s, that’s fair. That’s fair. If you, if you think interpreted, you, I think interpreted myself more than you

[00:26:11] Stan Sthanunathan: anyway, even on the block. I think, you know, if we have to give one advice to the next generation of insight leaders Yeah. That they can turbocharge their career, what would that advice be? 

[00:26:24] Nick Graham: Yeah, I think it’s a great. Question. I would say that for me, the biggest thing is it comes back to this thing about what role you play.

[00:26:35] Nick Graham: I would in, I would say the biggest thing is to think about yourself as a growth strategist for want of a better face growth planner, strategic planner. Doesn’t really matter what that phrase is, but that your job is to help the business work out how to unlock growth. Again, you’re going to do that potentially through.

[00:26:55] Nick Graham: Research quant, research analytics, um, advanced [00:27:00] analytics, uh, data strategy. Again, your level, your expertise might be in any of those disciplines or a mixture of those, but you’ve gotta remember that your thing that is more make you successful. That will give you value add, particularly, and we’ll talk about this in a second ’cause we can’t get through a podcast without talking about ai, but you know, in that world, the reality is a lot of that doing.

[00:27:22] Nick Graham: Will be done by automated, by delegated to, supported by ai. And so, which we can’t define ourselves through that, we have to think about the purpose. The purpose will be to help the business unlock sustainable growth that is gonna, you know, nudge consumers and shoppers in the right direction. And so I think what I would.

[00:27:42] Nick Graham: Encourage anyone, you know, coming into the industry series to, to always have that in mind that that’s the question they need to be asking is how is this thing that I’m doing going to unlock that ultimate goal for the business? What do I need to be able to do in whatever this project is to be able to do that?

[00:27:58] Nick Graham: What questions do I need to ask? [00:28:00] What framing do I need? Because the, the more you can understand the context of the deliverable, I mean it’s, you know, it’s classic, but the more you understand that, the better that piece of research will be and the more future proofed it will be. Because again, you know. AI can come in, technology can come in and do the doing bit in a more efficient way and potentially even more effective than us in some cases.

[00:28:22] Nick Graham: But the framing of what the problem is and how we land that answer into the business, I think that’s the bit where the human skills will always be critical. So that’s, that’s why I’d say to focus. 

[00:28:32] Stan Sthanunathan: So that is a great advice for people, let’s say on the enterprise side. You say that is also true for people on the agency side, or would you have a slightly different piece of advice for how agency side leaders need to behave, think, do things differently to future prove their career?

[00:28:55] Stan Sthanunathan: I would 

[00:28:56] Nick Graham: say, 

[00:28:56] Stan Sthanunathan: I 

[00:28:56] Nick Graham: guess ultimately I think. [00:29:00] All as an industry will share that. Right? So we’ll come at it from different perspectives, but I think we will all share that because again, I sort of think that’s where the industry will go. I do think on the, um, agency side, I do think deeper understanding of the technology.

[00:29:19] Nick Graham: Deep understanding of and what the, and what the, what AI and other technologies will be able to be able to, to be able to bring us in order to be able to, um, not just about efficiency, ’cause I know that obviously is a big part of the narrative, but to help us see patterns that we can’t see today. To be able to connect together data sets to help us, um, spots founding ingredients before they happen to help us build, to develop ideas much more efficiently and effectively.

[00:29:46] Nick Graham: So I think again. To me, the the insights, internal insights, leisure of the future will be using a lot of that, but actually having the agency partner being able to really deeply understand not just the mechanics of [00:30:00] research, but the mechanics of technology, augmented research, being able to do much more.

[00:30:04] Nick Graham: And so I guess. We all obviously need to scale up on, on what technology can do, uh, particularly obviously ai, but I think particularly for those on the agency side, that’ll become bigger and bigger part, um, of, of what will really need them to bring to bear, um, without losing, of course, you know, that’s only a component of the how it gets done.

[00:30:27] Nick Graham: I would never say we should, we should never lose the. At the end of the day, we’re trying to understand human beings because all of their complexities and idiosyncrasies of human behavior. And so let’s not forget that. We also still need to understand in the context of that, so, you know, again, technology can make us more efficient.

[00:30:44] Nick Graham: It can help us spot things, but I still, until this day, don’t think it will ever be able to replicate and fully understand why human beings do what they do. And so it’ll still need that. Um. Sort of, uh, the human science to go with the data science and [00:31:00] the AI to really understand what’s going on and what to do next.

[00:31:03] Stan Sthanunathan: I love the way you framed it as human science versus data science. That’s, that’s a really beautiful way. Otherwise, it 

[00:31:09] Nick Graham: always just, I always feel like. Empathy. Empathy feels too fluffy for people. I mean, I don’t think it’s, it’s, it’s not wrong, but I also feel like it doesn’t feel hard enough to compete with artificial intelligence and data science.

[00:31:24] Nick Graham: But there is some, I mean, there’s. I mean, I think Daniel Kahneman, people would tell you there is human science, right? There’s this science of understanding human behavior and why we, why we do what we do. And so again, I think human science, behavioral science deserves just as much a place at the table as, uh, data and technology.

[00:31:44] Stan Sthanunathan: Mick. Thank you. Thank you so much for bringing such a thoughtful and refreshingly honest perspective to the conversation. I think your ability to speak to both sides of Insight partnership is gonna be incredibly useful for both people on the [00:32:00] enterprise side and on the brand side. And thanks everyone for listening to the Insights and Innovation podcast.

[00:32:06] Stan Sthanunathan: And until next time, I’m Stan. 

 

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