Q&A with a corporate researcher
Editor's note: If you’re an end-client researcher and interested in participating in a Q&A with Quirk’s, please e-mail me at emilyk@quirks.com.
Elizabeth (Liz) Pfeiffer, Director of Consumer and Product Insights
Jessica (Jess) Noteware, Associate Consumer and Category Insights Manager
Prior to joining Chobani, both of you worked on the agency side. What are some of the challenges that you’ve faced moving to a client-side research position? What aspects have been rewarding?
Jess Noteware: In many ways, I think the biggest challenges in moving to a client-side research position have been the most rewarding. Prior to joining Chobani, I worked for NielsenIQ within their BASES Innovation Practice, where I was responsible for consulting on the activation potential for new innovations.
When I made the move to Chobani a year ago, I was excited to learn more about the “behind the scenes” of new product launches. With this excitement came the challenge of learning the end-to-end innovation process – and I found it takes a village. I quickly gained exposure to various aspects of our business; whether it was learning about food development with our labs, new product development, and R&D teams, watching category development, sales and retail execution’s effort to optimize retailer relationships and sell in new innovation, or discovering the partnership between creative and marketing in bringing new products to life on shelf and in campaigns – all roles were new to me, but important to learn for my research to have the greatest impact. I had to challenge myself to extend beyond initial survey results and accommodate the realities of the business. This has taken form several ways – whether it’s recommending the “second best” flavor to optimize margins, identifying ingredient alternatives when supply chain disruption limits availability of existing ingredients or prioritizing initiatives based on warehouse capacity. Navigating these challenges enabled me to create more cross-functional relationships, which is a rewarding aspect to my work. Gaining line of sight into all factors of a successful innovation launch has also helped me develop as a researcher, opening the door for deeper, more consultative research.
With a richer understanding of the dynamics of the business, I found myself learning the ins and outs of several new methodologies. I was well-versed in quantitative research, but quickly immersed in the world of qual – sitting in focus groups and clash pairings, and eventually moderating my own in-depth interviews. I was also exposed to new social listening tools, AI methodologies, brand tracking – and the list goes on and on. While getting over the initial hump of learning new methodologies took time, it has ultimately made my research more well-rounded, leading to greater traction within our business.
Liz Pfeiffer: I think my experience in many ways is very similar to Jess’s even though we came from very different types of agencies. Prior to Chobani I had started my career on more of the creative side as consultant for both innovation and branding houses.
One of my main goals in making the career shift over to brand side was to have a better understanding of how a new product actually makes its way to market and what factors drive and impact success. I had worked on so many projects ranging from big CPG companies to startups and even though I knew we were doing such great work for them, often the initiative would end up in a drawer, be deprioritized and never find its way on shelf. I primarily worked with marketing or NPD teams and to Jess’s point, having my eyes opened to all the variety of functions that really have input into a launch was almost like going to real world business school which has been invaluable. I’ll never forget what must have been one of my first weeks at Chobani, I was sitting on the NPD team at the time and I made a suggestion on a cross-functional project call and our head of engineering for our plants was like, “Great idea Liz, but the line that this is running on can’t do that, we would need a CapEx investment of XYZ in order for that to work.” Or another example – really having the background on what we can and cannot say when it comes to messaging or claims. On agency side, regulatory and legal teams are seen as the buzz kill, but those restraints are so important to bring in early in the process. Being able to work with all of these teams so directly and learn from them every day has been so enlightening.
All of this additional insight into business realities really shifted my own thinking and ways of approaching my work. As Jess mentioned gaining exposure to qual, Chobani was really my first true exposure to real quant and syndicated data. Thinking about challenges, that was a big one for me and one I’m still challenging myself with it every day. If I’m honest, I didn’t understand how important it was. Now I would never even consider a research plan or making a recommendation that’s not heavily steeped in it.
Do you have any tips for researchers looking to improve internal communications to ensure research findings inspire corporate decision makers to take action?
Noteware: The biggest advice I can offer is to promote two-way dialogue through all points of the research process. I’ve found that the most successful projects take a more hands-on approach, with decision makers heavily involved in conversations as soon as initial project scoping. As a researcher, I prioritize two primary objectives when scoping research:
Objective 1, and arguably the most basic, is identifying the appropriate methodology to answer key business questions. This is typically less stakeholder heavy, as our insights team is trusted as research experts who will make the correct methodology decision.
Objective 2 is aligning on action standards based on potential research outcomes. This is typically the most challenging part of project scoping but has the biggest reward. By aligning on action standards up front, decision makers are ultimately given the implications of research at an early stage, which results in greater personal investment and buy-in. It also gives leaders the opportunity to provide feedback if the outcomes are not sufficient, which can result in scope modifications (in many cases scope expansion), that will greater serve the needs of the business. This initial project alignment also sets the stage for more efficient results conversations, where instead of establishing KPIs, there is a more productive focus on debriefing results and implementing next steps. Having a two-way dialogue is equally important here, as reactions to research pave the way for future research considerations and results that drive more action.
Pfeiffer: Thinking about your different audiences and the way they best absorb information is so critical and something our team has really placed a lot of emphasis on over the past few years.
I think insights functions and researchers can often get a bad rap or really bring about a stereotype in organizations – “the nerdy data people” who are too in the weeds or only speak numbers. When I first came on board, I saw some decks that made my eyes glaze over. I worked closely with our leaders Matt Paolucci and Allison Masor to think about who our stakeholders are from leadership and NPD to creatives and about ways the data and insights can come to life that translates to their learning and working styles. We call it “slideology” and revamped our different reports to cater to their different needs. When it comes NPD, we can get more into the minutia with graphs and tables, but if we’re working with marketing or creative, we’re leveraging higher level storytelling and imagery to convey our points. We certainly aim to blend the two approaches as much as possible so we’re not being duplicative in our work and can lean on decks that work cross-functionally. Another example is that when we’re thinking about our reports, we try to design the deliverable in the format that we know can easily be lifted and leveraged directly by the stakeholder. Asking ourselves questions like – if sales wanted to put this into a customer facing deck, would that be, OK? What would we need to change about it?
Is your team planning on leveraging any new methodologies or techniques in the next year?
Noteware: A recent focus for our team has been layering multiple data sources onto primary quantitative research to paint a more holistic picture of results. While the list of potential resources is endless, the most impactful technique I’ve recently brought on board is AI trend analysis. We’re still getting our feet wet, but have found success with Tastewise, a tool that aggregates social media data with food service and menu insights to identify flavor trends, ingredients and consumer benefits.
For the many researchers who frequent TURF analysis, we typically see results that show relatively strict preference for one to two flavors, but several flavor options for sets of three and beyond when reach begins to taper off. While it’s always great to report back to stakeholders that there is flexibility to prioritize internally loved flavors, we’ve found supplementing the research with social insights adds a rich layer to flavor prioritization. Tastewise provides information on the maturity of a flavor within its category lifecycle, as well as social growth rates, flavor trend projection and ingredient usage in recipes and on menus. By tapping into this data, we’re able to give stakeholders a fuller picture on the implications of launching a given flavor, which positions us with a greater chance of success.
Pfeiffer: One focus area we have is to dig deeper into how we think about our consumers and the way we identify and talk about cohorts and platform segmentations. We’re still a pretty young company in the scheme of things and traditional segmentation work costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of time to execute. Now that we’re playing in spaces beyond yogurt, we also need to think about how these segments carry over to different categories and interact with one another. Is someone who prioritizes flavor and the taste experience over, say, nutritional composition in yogurt [going to do] the same in coffee creamers? How similar or unique is the consumer that is buying our oat milk from the consumer buying our cold brew made with oat milk?
Our approach to psychographics is something we’re starting to put a real critical lens on – especially at the quantifiable level. A challenge really resides in the art and science that is needed. We need any frameworks or tools we lean on to truly be grounded in data, but we also need them to speak to the true nuances and nature of consumers – we know how complex people are, as well as say how many different segments can exist in a given cohort or category. We’re looking for ways to codify their values and behaviors in a way that helps paint a simple, easy to understand picture, yet gives us the depth to be able speak to them in a way that truly resonates. Providing more value to them and creating a deeper human connection is imperative to the perception and health of the Chobani brand.