Building an Insights-Driven Culture: From Instinct to Evidence-Based Decision Making with Leyla Doany

Description

In this episode of The Curiosity Current, join Leyla Doany, a consumer insights leader, as she shares her journey transforming an instinct-driven business into an insights powerhouse at JOOLA. Discover how to build an insights function from scratch, unlock untapped market potential through creative data analysis, and leverage storytelling to drive organizational change. Whether you're a seasoned researcher or brand strategist, this conversation offers valuable perspectives on balancing rigorous methodology with real-world business needs, including how to uncover a $374M market opportunity in the growing pickleball industry. Plus, learn why being "a storyteller disguised as a strategist" might be the key to making research insights truly actionable.

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Transcript

‍Leyla - 00:00:01:

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The biggest priority if you are building an insights function completely from scratch is that is going to be your secret sauce. Just tell the story. Forget about the data. The sooner you focus on that instead of the data, you would honestly be surprised at how many more conversations you're invited into and how people start viewing you as a fundamental part of the decision-making process.

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Stephanie - 00:00:26:

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Hello, fellow insight seekers. Welcome to The Curiosity Current, a podcast that's all about navigating the exciting world of market research. I'm Stephanie Vance.

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Matt - 00:00:37:

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I'm Matt Mahan. Join us as we explore the ever-shifting landscape of consumer behavior and what it means for brands like yours.

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Stephanie - 00:00:44:

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Each episode will get swept up in the trends and challenges facing researchers today, riding the current of curiosity towards new discoveries and deeper understanding.

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Matt - 00:00:54:

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Along the way, we'll tap into the brains of industry leaders, decode real-world data, and explore the tech that's shaping the future of research.

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Stephanie - 00:01:02:

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So whether you're a seasoned pro or just getting your feet wet, we're excited to have you on board.

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Matt - 00:01:07:

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So with that, let's jump right in.

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Stephanie - 00:01:11:

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Today on The Curiosity Current, we are thrilled to welcome Leyla Doany, a consumer insights leader who has leveraged an extensive career on both the brand and supplier side to drive organizational change in her current role, transforming an instinct-driven business into an insights-driven powerhouse.

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Matt - 00:01:28:

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Leyla has led award-winning research projects across CPG, toys and games, and most recently at JOOLA, where she built their first ever consumer insights function from scratch, uncovering untapped market potential and driving product strategy in the fast-growing world of Pickleball.

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Stephanie - 00:01:44:

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In this episode, we're going to explore what it takes to embed insights into a company culture, and of course, why curiosity remains the secret weapon for brands navigating today's dynamic consumer landscape. Leyla, welcome to The Curiosity Current.

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Leyla - 00:01:59:

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Thank you so much. Really, really glad to be here. It's sort of odd to hear everything listed out. You know, you look back and you think, oh, okay, I've done a lot of things. That's awesome. But yeah, really looking forward to diving into some good discussions today.

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Matt - 00:02:12:

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We are too. Let's talk about some of those things. So you've worked across both agency and client side roles. That's something that's always interesting to talk about. You started out at Kantar, spent some time at Unilever, went to Hasbro, and now at JOOLA. We always like to start here. What sparked your interest in consumer insights? Why market research? How did you end up here? And what has kept you curious over the years?

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Leyla - 00:02:37:

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So ironically, I actually came into the research and insights world completely by chance. So my bachelor's degree was in English, English Literature. So ultimately, I was told publishing and teaching are probably the two areas you are going to go into. I did a couple of publishing internships a long, long time ago now. And I actually very quickly realized this is definitely not for me. At the time, I was working with a graduate kind of recruitment agency. So they landed me this internship in market research. At the time, I had no idea what market research was. It was honestly not really something that was discussed as a viable career option. People would often talk about things like business, marketing, high level, right? But I actually never heard anyone talk about market research and consumer insights specifically. So I landed this internship. Honestly, two weeks into it, I had this light bulb moment. And I thought, this is such a good career for me because it essentially combines the two parts of my brain, which are analytical and very creative as well. A little off the cuff comment here. I have a background in acting. So outside of work, I do a lot of community theater, right? So that was one of the parts I really liked about market research was being able to combine the analytical sort of data side with the more creative storytelling aspects, leveraging some of the work I had done in acting, right? So those were the things which made me realize two weeks into this realization, yes, I can definitely kind of see myself staying here. And in terms of what keeps me curious, I would say, first and foremost, I am just a deeply curious person by nature. I think all of us who work in market research and consumer insights are, right? We just love asking the question why over and over and over. And we're never really satisfied with the answer that we get. But also, I would say the variety of my work has kept me really interested because, as you mentioned, I have worked in consumer packaged goods at Unilever, toys, games at Hasbro, now sports at JOOLA. Every category is so interesting, so different. You have all these kinds of new questions that come up, new types of consumers and new learning opportunities, ultimately. So it definitely keeps me interested and keeps me on my toes, I would say.

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Matt - 00:05:02:

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Great. It's super interesting. I love the way you spoke to this like a combination of the two hemispheres of your brain. That's a really interesting concept. I think we hear sometimes talking to other researchers that there is a creative element. In this industry. And when you can tap into it, it's like you unlock a superpower, right? It's like you reach a different level.

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Leyla - 00:05:21:

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Definitely, definitely. I describe myself as a storyteller disguised as a strategist, right? Which I think directly kind of speaks to that, that being creative is not really a nice to have in this line of work. I actually do see it as an essential element of being a strong researcher.

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Stephanie - 00:05:38:

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For sure. We love that. We clocked that, that you refer to yourself as a storyteller disguised as a strategy. I'm curious, what does that look like in your day to day?

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Leyla - 00:05:48:

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So for me, it all starts with quite a simple question and I try to ask it to myself every day, which is, so what? Right? So what? I actually learned that at AlloVir and it has really, really stuck with me over the years, right? So what I mean by that is data in isolation, it doesn't actually mean anything. Okay. So if I tell you, for example, this brand has 15% market share. So what? Right? I don't understand. Is that good? Is it bad? Kind of, is it concerning? How should I feel about it? Right? What does it mean? So in my eyes, this is where storytelling really comes in and it's how you kind of take raw data, whether that is numbers or qualitative data, and you convert it into something that really drives action. Right? I think as insights professionals, we all have the same goal ultimately, which is to create some kind of impact and stop our work just sitting unread, collecting dust in someone's inbox. Right? That's kind of our big, biggest nightmare as researchers. And I really do strongly think that storytelling is the secret source that kind of ensures your work is never going to get lost. Right? And ultimately that is because storytelling makes something memorable, right? People remember stories, not statistics. It makes it kind of emotionally resonate with you. It makes it actionable. And especially now, I think decision makers, especially high-level executives like CEOs, for example, it's just absolute information overload, right? With lots of data that is not related to market research, like finance, operations, HR. And so storytelling to me is really what helps separate the signal from the noise. Right? And here I think of something that has played a really important role for me throughout my career, which is this idea of an elevator test. Right? So I always think of a stakeholder, here's my presentation, and then they go meet their colleague in the elevator, would they be able to explain the kind of core insight and action to someone in 20 seconds or less? Right? And if my story is strong enough, and it's emotionally compelling, then you know, the answer is always going to be yes.

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Matt - 00:08:00:

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Really cool. I like the idea of kind of turning the elevator pitch on its head and adding that creative element. Like, how do you make it sticky? How do you make it sticky to the person who has to convey the value, even though they themselves might not be the subject matter expert? They just heard your story. I think that's a great idea. That's a great test. I'm going to take note of that one. I'm going to use that one.

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Stephanie - 00:08:20:

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I know, right? Write that down. So Leyla, Matt and I both really want to get into this topic with you. It's so fun and so exciting and really different from a conversation that we've been able to have so far on the podcast, which is about building an insights function from the ground up like you've done at JOOLA. That is no small feat, obviously. And we are so curious what it's like to come into a somewhat mature organization that is ready, that is showing that readiness to shift from instinct-driven to insight-led decision-making. That's very rare, I feel like. And I'm curious, were you empowered to make the changes that you knew were needed?

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Leyla - 00:09:01:

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Yeah, it's definitely, it's been a huge learning experience for me and just such an exciting opportunity because, you know, as you mentioned, outside of a startup environment, it's very rare that you can actually go into an organization and really build something from the ground up. So ultimately for me, you know, every research function starts with the same question, right? Which is, what do we already know? Or rather, what do we think we know? So I arrived at JOOLA my first month or so, I just spent a lot of time speaking to people across different teams. I remember there was a running joke that I was just never at my desk, right? Because I was... Always speaking to someone in someone's office, right? So I would ask them things like, what do you think JOOLA is best at? Where do you think we need to grow? And more importantly, how do you know that, right? What is that based on? And a really consistent theme emerged from a couple of things. So the main one was that people saw JOOLA as this kind of go-to brand for premium Pickleball paddles and very high level performance focused players, right? But there was a big shared belief that we had a lot more room to grow in the kind of casual recreational Pickleball market. And when I asked people, you know, how do you know this? Where does this understanding come from? Most just pointed to experience, right? So they said, well, you know, we've spent years in this industry. We have pretty strong gut feelings. We have anecdotal evidence. We're surrounded by people who know this industry quite well. So... That level of intuition is very valuable, right? Even as a market researcher who's very strongly grounded in data, I do think intuition is a very, very valuable thing to have. But it was pretty clear to me that even though we had strong instincts around that kind of highly engaged player base, we lacked real data when it came to that big, fast-growing casual market, right? So that was the first thing, was kind of understanding the broader research need. And then the second aspect was data, of course. So I came in, I did a full data audit. So I was looking at, you know, what do we already have? And in this case, it was mostly internal data. So things like sales, internal digital analytics, campaign tracking, there wasn't really much kind of external data and the gaps that there were, right? And so from that, I built quite a high level kind of research roadmap, right? Which was connecting our North Star goal, which was let's shift all of our decision making from instincts to insight-driven decisions. What are the specific questions we want to answer? So for example, what does the casual recreational Pickleball market look like? What data do we have? And then what data do we still need to answer that? And that kind of framework for me just made it easier to sort of rally around research as a strategic tool that was going to drive our decision making rather than a kind of nice to have, which was just confirming what we already knew.

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Matt - 00:12:10:

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That's incredible.

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Stephanie - 00:12:11:

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If they're like, and, you know, certainly don't want to like give away all of JOOLA's secret sauce, but I'm curious if you feel like there's a generalizable sort of like set of, you know, if you're coming into an org that hasn't traditionally had a lot of primary research, is there low hanging fruit? What is the low hanging fruit? Like what are the foundational things that have to be in place first?

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Leyla - 00:12:35:

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Sure. I think at a high level, the biggest priority, if you are building an insights function completely from scratch, is understanding where you sit in the market, right? So to me, that is really, really foundational knowledge because it's very easy for a brand to just operate in an echo chamber, right? You're making decisions based on internal assumptions. You're saying you're, you're very strong in one part of the market, but you actually don't have a clear picture of the competitive landscape. So for us at JOOLA, the core starting point was market share. We didn't know what our market share was. So immediately I came in and I said, we need to know how much of the market we actually own, which segments are we strong in? What are the big opportunities? What are the big threats? Right. That clarity to me is, is going to drive everything from our product strategy, right? What do we need to launch? How are we going to communicate with different audience segments? Because for example, if we're overperforming in the premium segment, but we're kind of under penetrated in the casual space, that insight is going to completely inform how we shape our future growth, right? As I mentioned, what types of products should we make? Why should we distribute them? How should they be priced? What audiences do we need to communicate with? All of that is based around the fundamental insight of where do we sit in the market, right? How much of the market do we own? How much is there left up for grabs?

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Stephanie - 00:14:06:

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Makes sense. So you've got to understand all that sort of foundation, like who we are and where we are before you can start to waterfall down into actual strategy for market and for brand. It sounds like.

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Matt - 00:14:18:

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It's so true, and we see it so often, that situational awareness just doesn't exist. It can unlock real value when you're building something up from scratch like this. It's new. It can be exciting to executives when they get the value and they buy into your pitch. But the communication of that can be a challenge. I know it sounds like, I don't know if we want to throw out numbers, I don't know if you want to brag, but it sounds like you were able to unlock some pretty significant revenue at JOOLA by really tackling these foundational elements. I'm just curious about how you balance that opportunity with also being realistic about what it takes to capture it. And how do you speak the language of the business to overcome those hurdles that exist when something is new? How do you do that?

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Leyla - 00:15:07:

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It's complicated. It's complicated, that's for sure. But again, that's what kind of makes it interesting and exciting, right? So in terms of the market sizing aspect, honestly, this is probably the most challenging market sizing work I have ever done. So I was able to uncover a $374 million untapped market in Pickleball.

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Stephanie - 00:15:32:

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It's a pretty big discovery.

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Leyla - 00:15:33:

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It's amazing.

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Matt - 00:15:34:

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Big fight.

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Leyla - 00:15:34:

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But it was very, very complicated to do. So as I mentioned, the most difficult market sizing I've ever done and also the most exciting. So the core issue there was Pickleball is, it's a very new, it's a very fragmented category, which means the data is limited compared to something more established, right? So if I think back to Unilever, for example, great consumer packaged goods has been around for a long time. Nice established data. Get yourself a subscription to Nielsen, IRI, you're sorted, right? But with Pickleball, there is no one clean source of truth, unfortunately. So the way that I would break that down is think about all the places you can buy a Pickleball paddle, right? So of course you can buy in mass retail, Walmart, Target. I don't think I have walked into a single Walmart or Target now that does not have a Pickleball paddle.

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Stephanie - 00:16:30:

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Same.

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Matt - 00:16:30:

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For sure. Yeah.

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Leyla - 00:16:31:

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The sport is huge. It's really taking America by storm. That's for sure. Obviously you can buy on Amazon as well, direct-to-consumer consumer. So especially retailers like Pickleball Central, Just Paddles, that sort of thing. They're huge. And then you've also got your business to business partnerships. So for example, JOOLA has a partnership with Lifetime Fitness. So if you ever go and play Pickleball in Lifetime Fitness, you're going to be using a JOOLA paddle, right? So that came up with this huge challenge, which was how do I stitch together all of these different kinds of puzzle pieces into something which is more cohesive in terms of market sizing? So for mass retail and Amazon, pretty straightforward, right? We had quite traditional research tools there. But for online and the direct-to-consumer base, I had to get really, really creative. So I ended up using digital analytics. I used tools like SEMrush and I said, okay, how many people have been to the checkout pages of these websites? Obviously, we have industry knowledge on, you know, how much are people going to be spending on average? And then obviously people will be abandoning their carts to some level. So we mapped that out in line with industry estimates. And it was very scrappy, right? But it worked and it allowed us to calculate JOOLA's current share and then that kind of $400 million untapped market opportunity. And so to go back to your question of balancing opportunity with realism, that part is huge, right? So internally, we were very, very clear, you know, this is not a prediction of revenue in any sense. I would honestly suggest most market researchers kind of steer away from that type of work. I don't necessarily think it's in our wheelhouse to do that, right?

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Matt - 00:18:21:

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Volumetrics is very much its own thing.

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Leyla - 00:18:23:

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Yes. So I tried to frame it as this is more of an estimate of the total market potential, right? So capturing it is going to involve a lot of things in terms of investment, brand positioning, distribution, etc. But the main goal was just to give us that kind of North Star, something really, really sort of tangible for everyone to rally around and to strategize around, which was we need to increase our market share in the recreational and casual market. Right. And that's exactly what that piece of work did.

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Matt - 00:18:55:

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It's amazing. What was the immediate reaction from Legacy? Was it a little bit of a sell that you had to do, or were they all in?

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Leyla - 00:19:03:

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Not at all. They were all in. They were all in, I think. To put it bluntly, money talks, right? Money talks. Once you're able to actually convert things into dollar value, it does make a huge difference, especially if you are speaking to high-level senior stakeholders who are perhaps less experienced with market research. That's honestly one challenge that I find with survey data. Sometimes senior executives don't take it quite as seriously because sometimes there isn't a dollar value associated with it. So, for example, when I'm doing things like citing survey data, I will typically start with a market estimate for each audience segment. And again, it's scrappy, right? It's not any kind of predictive value by any means, but you're taking things like your average spend, purchase frequency, how many people are in each segment, so then you can open your research with something like I said, okay, we have $400 million of untapped market opportunity here, right? Okay, so now I've got your attention. Now we can go through the more kind of attitudinal and behavioral insights, right? But sometimes if you're speaking to non-research folks, you have to set the context of this as tangible, real business value, right? This isn't just something which we're going to use to help us decide what to post on social media. This is something which is fundamental to our actual revenue as a business.

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Matt - 00:20:26:

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That's a great insight.

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Stephanie - 00:20:27:

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For sure. And it really, I think, calls out like how much of a Swiss Army knife you kind of have to be, especially in terms of like ability to work with and think about the kinds of data sources that are going to serve you well. And it isn't always surveys and it isn't always focus groups, right? It's not always primary research. It's about looking at the data that's out there, point of sale, things like that. And I love that you're like, you were having to stitch this all together across multiple sources. And the goal wasn't complete accuracy. It was a picture of, of the industry that people could understand and get behind and start to make strategic decisions around and based on. And I think that such a good call out for researchers in general, and particular in the brand side. So, you mention this a little bit, but I would love to dive into sort of, audience segmentation and, and how you have approached it. It's obviously such an important part of a business strategy. Even more critically now as brands are kind of balancing broad appeal with like personalized marketing, which is such a big deal right now. What did you learn when you were sort of building out JOOLA's first segmentation or segmentation that surprised you? Was there anything that you learned that was surprising and was, you know, kind of related to that? Is there a segment or an insight that really challenged some existing assumptions?

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Leyla - 00:21:52:

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Yeah, so I think what surprised me the most doing that first audience segmentation was just how big the Pickleball audience is overall, right? And specifically, how small the expert player segment really, really is in comparison, right? So internally, as I mentioned, we've always known JOOLA's strength is very much in those premium paddles designed for folks who are highly engaged. They're very performance driven. They want to level up and JOOLA is the best brand for that. But when we actually quantified it, you know, that segment is only about 30% of the total audience, right? Which is sort of mind blowing that there's that's a whole 70% of people that is up for grabs, essentially. So that insight, I think, challenged quite a lot of assumptions, right? It showed that while we're very, very strong in that niche, the much larger opportunity is in that recreational and casual space. So, you know, it forced us to think more broadly about, okay, how can we take the credibility that we have definitely, definitely built with serious Pickleball players? And how can we kind of use that as a halo to appeal to more beginners, more casual fans of the game? So it definitely turned some heads internally. But in my view, that is what all good research should do, right? It should reframe what we think we know. It should spark new conversations.

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Stephanie - 00:23:21:

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Well, and such like downstream implications for brand, for comms, for product, right? Like there were implications everywhere for that finding. It's fascinating.

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Leyla - 00:23:31:

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Yeah, huge. And as all good market research, it should be the core of everything, as I said, right? What then dictates what products we are making? How should they be priced? What channels should we market on? What should the marketing messaging be? It all stemmed from that core insight that we need to better understand recreational and casual players.

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Matt - 00:23:49:

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It occurs to me that you have worked in fast moving categories, basically your entire career, like real fast. CPG, I would imagine toys and games, very similar. And now sports, obviously, like you said to yourself, we didn't even know what Pickleball was just a few short years ago. How do you balance that? I know that when working in a fast moving category, research can take a little bit of a different flavor. The approach can take a little bit of a different flavor, right? I hesitate to say agile because it turns some people off. But when you start thinking about ways to do less with more, to get answers quickly in a way that enables quick iteration, sort of lends to that different way of thinking and of approaching just the project management of the research, right? Are there frameworks or processes that you use on your side that have kind of enabled you to thrive in that type of environment?

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Leyla - 00:24:46:

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Honestly, I would say this has been my biggest personal learning curve. I am naturally very, very detail oriented. I know there's huge strategy decisions which are hinging on my research. And I'm very, very committed to delivering work, which is high quality. I have quite high standards for myself. I want the insights to be very robust. So learning to actually be okay with good enough for now instead of 150% all in perfection was very challenging for me. It was a big mindset shift. Right. So ironically, I would say stakeholders themselves are often much more comfortable with directional insights than me. So they're the ones saying it's good enough. We just need to make a little bit more of an informed decision. It doesn't need to be.

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Matt - 00:25:37:

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That's so true.

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Leyla - 00:25:38:

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Perfect. And I'm the one in my head saying I would really prefer if it were perfect. Right. But JOOLA in particular, it is such a fast paced environment. Often there isn't time for deep dive research. So I've learned to stay quite agile by sort of looking across multiple data sources and asking, okay, what patterns keep emerging? Right. What signals are consistent even at a high level? So I can give you a good example, which is recently I did some global market sizing for Pickleball. Now, as I told you, very, very fragmented category, even in the us. So this was no small task at all. Right. Imagine all the complexities I mentioned about the US market. And then you're thinking, how does this apply to Vietnam and to China and India, where there's even less data available? Very complicated thing to do. Add in another layer of we didn't have much, much time to do this at all. Definitely no time for a survey in this context. So I had to think on my feet and I said, let's just use Google search, right? Let's use Google search volume as a proxy for consumer interests, right? We can benchmark different countries against the us, seeing as the us is the most established market, and then we can assess maturity and sort of growth potential, right? So then we're able to categorize markets into groups like, okay, this is an emerging market where the interest is impeccable is quite low relative to the US, but it's growing quite quickly, right? Or the inverse, it's an established market like Canada, where interest is quite high, but then the growth is a little bit lower. So that gave us a really kind of fast, actionable framework to work with, even if it wasn't quite perfect, right? And that is my key learning, I would say, across the past decade of my career is, you know, speed and rigor, they can actually coexist at the same time, if you're just clear about what the trade-offs are, and you're transparent about what the data can and can't say.

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Matt - 00:27:49:

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That is definitely the responsibility of us as researchers. I think that's such a great call out that it really hit that when you mentioned, you know, it's often not the stakeholders that need the convincing to move ahead. It's like this is why the world needs executives, right, to help us get out of our own heads. Like we feel as though we are the, you know, the keepers of the flame around the integrity of the work. And it is freeing. Right. I mean, I've been on that journey where you'll have an interaction with an executive like that. And it's like, oh, I see it. We just need to move on this. You're looking for a different level of decision making support that we can enable in a different way. Like having that recognition combined with what you just shared, it still falls on us to share implications, risks. But it's such a freeing way to look at moving forward. You might not need segmentation, a quantitative segmentation. You might just be able to Google your way through it.

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Stephanie - 00:28:46:

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A global quantitative segmentation, no less. Yeah.

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Matt - 00:28:50:

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Right, right.

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Leyla - 00:28:51:

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Definitely. I think that's why I probably couldn't be an entrepreneur and most of us in research couldn't be entrepreneurs because we are quite uncomfortable with taking massive risks or taking decisions when you feel like there's gaps in the data, right? But as you say, that's why having a market researcher and an exec together is a really powerful sort of dream team, right? Because you're able to make informed decisions, but things still get done. You can move forward even if you're not 110% confident in something. It's often the case of saying, for now, this is good enough.

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Stephanie - 00:29:25:

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Absolutely. To switch gears a little bit, because I definitely want to talk about this with you. We talk a lot, Leyla, on the podcast about, I think it even came up already earlier from you, about the kind of varied backgrounds for consumer insights professionals. You know, everyone you meet comes from a slightly different background. You have the academic cohorts, like psychologists and anthropologists who make their way here. You have folks coming up to that, you know, MMR, very pure market research background. You yourself, English major, it sounded like. But you recently completed a master's of marketing at Georgetown. And I am so curious to know how doing that, especially in your, you know, once you've been in your career for some amount of time, how that's changed your approach to consumer insights and how it's made you better at your job.

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Leyla - 00:30:17:

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I would say it really, it pushed me out of my research and insights bubble completely, right? I'm not sure if either of you resonate with this, but when your whole career has been research and insights, it's very easy to become siloed. You're so focused on data, research insights, what's the story? You're actually a bit disconnected from how it gets used in the rest of a business, right? How does a business work? How do things get executed outside of research? So what that degree gave me was a much deeper understanding of what happens after the market research, after the consumer insights, right? So in particular, it helps me understand how marketing teams build integrated campaigns? How do they, you know, decide what the KPIs should be? How do they make real world decisions about, you know, what channels are we going to launch this campaign on? What is the messaging? I actually used to joke a lot during my master's that my job basically stopped at, okay, here's the data. Good luck.

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Stephanie - 00:31:20:

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You talk about that a lot. Yep.

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Leyla - 00:31:21:

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As you want, right? This next part is not related to me. I've done my job here. But my degree really challenged that. It challenged me to think much more critically about what comes next and said, okay, the research and insights is actually just the first phase. Now, what are you going to do with it? That was a huge mindset shift for me. I do think it made me a better insights professional because it sort of made me connect the dots, right? So now when I deliver research, I'm not just thinking about the story and my job ending after I've delivered it. I'm thinking a little bit more about the execution, the timelines, and the budget. Am I recommending something which is just not feasible, right? And not actionable. And how can this insight actually move the needle across different teams? And if it can't, if it's something that's very, very difficult to execute against, then I probably shouldn't be recommending it.

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Stephanie - 00:32:16:

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Yeah, makes a ton of sense.

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Matt - 00:32:18:

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Looking across your career from Kantar, I'll use Kantar as a starting point, to JOOLA today. What is one challenge that has kind of shaped your perspective as a leader? I know you mentioned, you know, you've established yourself as being the go-to for scrappy market sizing. What's kind of like the challenge, though, that stands out insofar as it changed the way you approach leadership in the industry?

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Leyla - 00:32:42:

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First of all, being known for scrappy market sizing is great. I might well update my LinkedIn by an high-act-

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Stephanie - 00:32:48:

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There you go. Yeah.

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Leyla - 00:32:49:

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I might like that. So I think the main challenge that has really shaped me is understanding and accepting that real life market research and insights in a business context is very, very messy. So it's going back to my idea of always wanting the gold standard of research all the time. I'm so much more personally comfortable if things are done to a very, very high degree, very rigorous, very robust, very reliable. But most of the time that is just not possible, right? Due to budget, time constraints, issues with data access, all that type of stuff, especially working client side. So oftentimes it's much more about thinking outside the box, right? Being creative. I often think about market research as a jigsaw puzzle, right? That's always my favorite, favorite metaphor when I explain it to people who don't have a background in market research and consumer insights. It's starting from the end. So what should that finished picture look like, right? What are the questions I want to understand? You know, how are these insights going to be used in a real life business context? And then reverse engineering. So saying what puzzle pieces do I need to fit together to create that final picture? And so in the context of market research, often being quite messy and scrappy and you're not able to do things perfectly in terms of the jigsaw puzzle, it's saying right now I do not have the jigsaw puzzle piece that I want, but what could fit instead? Perhaps there are two other pieces that might fit instead and it will still get me to that kind of end product. Even if it's not that ideal, perfect, fits correctly piece, it will often still be good enough. And I think that's something that most market researchers need to be a little bit more comfortable with.

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Stephanie - 00:34:41:

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It really sparked something for me when you said that, because it makes me think, and you know, Matt and I, of course, sit on the supplier side of the industry, that part of my responsibility really needs to be to start asking, hey, what other puzzle pieces do you have? Like, what other data are you working with? And really recognizing that what I'm doing is a complementary piece. It is not the thing. It is not the strategy. It is not the only piece of information. And I think if we can kind of take that message home, it really is to start asking that question to understand better where we sit, because it's going to make us maximally useful to you, right? To know, let's not prioritize this thing, because you've got that here. We can use this time and this budget most effectively by doing X for you and really let us be partners rather than, you know, kind of order takers or just doing our work in a silo, just like, you know, you talked about the dangers of that kind of work.

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Leyla - 00:35:37:

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So definitely, definitely. That is something I've really seen from having been on both the client side and the supplier side is often client side. You will take work which has been done from the supplier side and you kind of slice it and dice it and you combine it with other things. And sometimes you'll just take one or two charts and you put it into your own presentation, right? In the ideal world, you'd be working much more closely with your supplier, where, as you said, they're able to give you that real kind of consultative value of, okay, let's sit down and map out what is all the research you're doing right now? What do you already know? What data sets do you have access to? How can we help you kind of connect the dots? Because that's going to be much more valuable than us just running a survey and kind of sending you over the data, knowing that you will probably take it and use it in a different way. Can we just go straight to that end stage and do that for you and help you with that?

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Stephanie - 00:36:31:

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That's a great takeaway. Let's remember that, Matt.

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Matt - 00:36:34:

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Wrote that one down as well.

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Stephanie - 00:36:36:

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Well, to close this out here, Leyla, one of the things that I would love to hear from you is, is there any advice that you can share for brand side researchers like yourself who may be in an organization that remains relatively instinct driven? And, you know, how can they maybe not be quite as empowered as you were coming into JOOLA, but how can they start to drive incremental change and center the role of insights in strategy and decision making?

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Leyla - 00:37:05:

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Here, I would say it's really that storytelling aspect. As I mentioned at the beginning, you know, that is going to be your secret sauce. That is what will get you into the rooms with the decision makers, that elevator test, right? Just tell the story. Forget about the data. The data ultimately is, it's just a means to an end. Always remind yourself of that. So what, right? So what, so what, so what? What does it mean to my audience? How do I want them to feel? The sooner you focus on that instead of the data, you would honestly be surprised at how many more conversations you're invited into and how people start viewing you as a fundamental part of the decision-making process, right? Rather than saying, I already want to do this. Let me do it. And then go to market research and say, Hey, was this a good idea? Instead of that, it's people saying, well, I don't really know what the story is. I need to go speak to Leyla. She'll set my head straight. Tell me what I should focus on. Tell me what I should be concerned about. And then I'll go create my strategy, right? So telling people, this is what the story is, rather than letting your stakeholders sort of scramble around trying to piece together the story themselves. Just give, give people the story already.

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Matt - 00:38:15:

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It's great advice. My last question I like to torture our guests with on their way out is to look into your crystal ball and tell us from your perspective, from where you sit, what do you see is kind of the most impactful trends coming down in maybe the next five years? That's going to change the way we work, the way you work as an insights pro, whether that be in the insights industry or whether in the category that you work in. What's going to happen?

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Leyla - 00:38:43:

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Well, obviously we all know that AI is taking over the world now, right?

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Matt - 00:38:47:

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What's that?

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Leyla - 00:38:49:

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And that's not a bad thing. It is making so many aspects of my life much, much easier, right? Obviously, my value is not sitting in Excel doing something which could easily be automated. But the implications of that are market research and consumer insights now needs to become much more human, right? So ChatGPT can do parts of my analysis for me. Maybe it can write a couple of parts of my deck for me. What it cannot do is get up in a room of 50 people, right, and deliver something which is punchy, exciting, gets people to really feel something about the research, right? Gets people to, again, go meet their colleague in the elevator and say, I'm so excited. Leyla just uncovered this, you know, $400 million untapped opportunity segment. Let's go do this. How are we going to act on it? AI will never be able to lend that kind of human emotive element. And I do think that is the way of bridging the gap between the research itself and people taking action. Can you get people to feel something? AI will never take that away from me.

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Stephanie - 00:40:02:

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That I am firm on.

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Matt - 00:40:03:

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I love that. I think that's a sentiment that a lot of us share. Like, if we are here because we're interested in studying people, then it has to fall on us to keep people at the center of the work that we do.

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Stephanie - 00:40:13:

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It also really strikes me that your acting background is honestly part of your secret sauce, Leyla, obviously. Yeah.

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Leyla - 00:40:20:

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Definitely. It massively is. I would recommend any market researchers to at least do a couple of acting courses. It really, it changes the game for you. That's for sure.

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Matt - 00:40:28:

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All right. So we have our recurring ending segment that we've invited Leyla to join us for on this episode of The Curiosity Current. That is the undercurrent where we all just talk about something that we are passionate about. Just take a couple of minutes and share a little bit of details on something that's really influencing the way we're approaching our work or something that seems tangentially related or directly related to consumer insights or study of people or what have you. It's our chance to have a little bit of fun with just the things that we're geeking out about. I'll go first. Because it's going to sound like I tailored this to this conversation, but it's really just fortuitous timing. I have recently pulled down a book off of my shelf that I bought years ago and have only just recently dove back into. And that book is Story Mythos by Shane Meeker, which is all about looking at the way stories are told, particularly in film and applying those principles to how you communicate the value of the work that you're doing, how you make that sales pitch, how you communicate the findings from your research study in a way that, just like Leyla was saying earlier in the episode, makes it so that that value is sticky, easily communicated, and remembered after a 20-second conversation in the elevator. I think that Leyla was spot on when you were mentioning, Leyla, how important it is for us as researchers to really curate stories around the work that we do, because that's how we infuse the human element and make it seem real, make it come to life. This book is all about that. I would definitely give it a read if anyone listening hasn't. It's not new. It came out maybe like 2017, 2018. It's just a lot of fun, too, especially if you're a movie buff, because he works some really cool movie references in there. It's all kind of like the hero's journey. You start with who's the hero. Obviously, in a marketing context, it's your customer. What's the journey that they're on? What are they trying to overcome? What's it like when they succeed? Looking at things through that lens is a really interesting way to do it. There are really great workshops in the book as well. If you have a brand, imagine casting your brand's movie. Lots of really fun, creative stuff. It's been a cool way to do a little bit of different thinking.

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Leyla - 00:43:00:

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Awesome. I'll have to check that out. That sounds absolutely fascinating. Honestly, I'm not really reading much fiction these days. I'm much more interested in nonfiction. So that definitely sounds like something worth diving into.

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Matt - 00:43:10:

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Interesting.

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Stephanie - 00:43:11:

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For sure. So I have to admit, this is, I can only classify this as tangentially related. But I'm a social psychologist by training. So I am a sucker for theoretical or basic research in social psychology that has applied implications, in particular for things like pro-social interventions. Small shifts in how we think or behave that can be leveraged to create pro-social change. And I was just reading that there is a new paper out in communication psychology from some researchers that are out of England and Germany about how choices made individually for individual reward versus cooperatively for a joint reward can be influenced by how and when information about the reward structure is presented. I know that's just a lot of, you know, stuff. I'll get to the implications here.

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Matt - 00:44:00:

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You're going to have to give me a non-PhD version of that.

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Stephanie - 00:44:03:

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I know. I'm getting there. The research was done in the context of the prisoner's dilemma, if you guys know that. It's this concept from game theory that's been used to demonstrate how truly rational individuals might not cooperate, even when it is in their best interest to do so. And so what this new research shows is that in the context of a prisoner's dilemma type experiment, when participants paid attention first to the payoffs that others would receive in the experiment, there was an increased likelihood that they would make cooperative decisions. And what I like about this and what it really drives home to me is that cooperation isn't just a matter of sort of a person's baseline altruism or aligning people's personal incentives with those of the group. But there really is also this attentional aspect of things. And if we can create interventions where people are guided to focus first on the other rather than themselves, that they are more likely to cooperate. And I just think that's cool. So.

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Matt - 00:45:02:

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Interesting. So it's like an order effect?

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Stephanie - 00:45:05:

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It's really just about capitalizing on attention early so that they are the same information as they would receive no matter what. But by capitalizing on where their attention is, you're able to give them information that gives them the perspective of others before they necessarily consider themselves. And that changes that behavior.

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Matt - 00:45:23:

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You kind of hijack their train of thought.

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Stephanie - 00:45:26:

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Yeah. It was done with rats, though. Just kidding. It wasn't. It was humans. I just like to say that. Leyla, take us home with this, though.

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Leyla - 00:45:33:

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Honestly, I have been spending a lot of time on Reddit lately.

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Matt - 00:45:37:

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I love Reddit.

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Stephanie - 00:45:38:

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I love it.

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Leyla - 00:45:38:

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And it honestly just made me realize how it is such an underutilized tool in research, right? So, for example, now.

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Matt - 00:45:45:

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100%.

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Leyla - 00:45:45:

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Whenever I want to buy something, right, and I want to understand, okay, what's the real deal here? Rather than the promoted reviews on the website, what do people really think of this product? I will Google, for example, X brand skincare product, Reddit. And then go read what people think about it because that's where you get the really honest, no, this brand is overhyped, not worth it. Here's a great alternative. And people are a lot more honest because it's anonymous, obviously. So, Reddit. Ideal hack, great for personal enjoyment and buying better products in general, based on real people recommendations, but also amazing for research.

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Matt - 00:46:26:

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What is it about the Reddit magic that whenever you're in that secondary research desk bar or trying to research a stroller purchase, personal experience... You land on Reddit and it's just like, they're my people. This is where my people have been. This is where they are. They're nowhere else on the internet, but they're all there in one place. What is it? How did they do that? It's an amazing product.

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Leyla - 00:46:49:

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It is incredible.

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Stephanie - 00:46:50:

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I think part of it, too, is the upvoting system, right? I mean, it's like it sort of polices it in a way where it's not policing, but like, you know, people elevate the things that people that resonate with them. So they're like doing the sizing part for us, too.

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Leyla- 00:47:05:

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Right. Basically.

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Stephanie - 00:47:06:

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Yeah.

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Leyla - 00:47:07:

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Yeah.

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Matt - 00:47:07:

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But you're so right. Like the implications of that for market research, if there's a way to harness that in a really digestible manner, that'd be a powerful tool.

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Leyla - 00:47:17:

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Also, it does mean that when I am, you know, doom scrolling, supposedly, at the end of the day, I tell myself, oh, it's work. This is research. I'm reading about people.

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Stephanie - 00:47:25:

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That's just work.

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Leyla - 00:47:26:

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Experiences. Yeah.

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Matt - 00:47:27:

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Absolutely.

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Stephanie - 00:47:28:

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Absolutely. Well, Leyla, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a delightful and insightful conversation. We're just so happy you joined us today.

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Leyla - 00:47:36:

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Thank you so much.

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Stephanie - 00:47:39:

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The Curiosity Current is brought to you by AYTM.

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Matt - 00:47:43:

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To find out how AYTM helps brands connect with consumers and bring insights to life, visit aytm.com.