Conversations with corporate researchers
Nancy Cox
Consumer Understanding and Insights Manager
Hallmark Cards
What do you feel is the biggest challenge for the MR industry? How does it impact your day to day work?
I find it very interesting that the MR industry is priming itself with loaded questions – questions about challenges and even the death of MR. Innovations and advancements come from discontent and adversity, not when we’re satisfied with the status quo. I’m not being Pollyanna – the media is inflating the so-called recession recovery. We are in tough economic times. Yet these are exciting times for MR. For example, mobile research may have killed the traditional grid question but now I can ask Mom to take a photo of her child’s Christmas list – in seconds I get an accurate picture of 25 Lego items pasted onto a piece of construction paper. Mom wouldn’t have listed all these items - probably just typed in “Legos” - and I would have lost the richness of seeing the true picture.
As a researcher, I’m extracting insights from photos not text. And - Bonus! - the photos inspire my business partners.
What are one or two best strategies for marketing researchers to remain relevant to internal clients and their business needs?
Lean into your natural talents. Don’t brush off what comes easy for you but that others notice. I’m a person that a pal once described as “water” as he watched how people were naturally drawn to me and shared deeply personal stories at our neighborhood coffee shop. I lean into this at work by taking my laptop to work in natural conversation places such as our café - a natural place for “water” - or walk-thru library. I have a larger than usual cubicle opening - no door. I pick up my phone and I respond to e-mails even if I have to say, “Can’t talk right now but I’m scheduling some chat time for us.” Then I can hear each business partner’s questions, fears, hopes, goals and frustrations. Now I have access to what every researcher needs to know most – their audience. Often I have an insight or story I can share right away. Always, those conversations inform my next research.
Nothing is more influential than to come back to someone and say, “I heard you and I have something specifically for you.” By listening carefully, you can also hear the way they want their data. That’s strategy number two – find out how they like to learn. Are they using lots of visual words such as “I want to see” or auditory words “if I could only hear” or kinetic “I am trying to build” – you can then tailor your insights and recommendations by delivering to that learning style. For the auditory learner, have respondents leave a “voicemail” answer to your question then send them a few pointed answers to listen to. For a kinetic learner, we might draw a mind map together to synthesize the insights.
Talk about a recent win for your insights team and what you learned from it.
There’s a pattern of sports metaphors in these questions - challenge, strategy, win - so if you let me brag a bit about our World-Series winning Kansas City Royals, I’m going to use their style of play as an answer. The Royals won by putting the ball into play and moving the line – not by one dramatic home run. That’s how I see our team winning now at Hallmark and particularly on the topic of the Millennial market. Our approach is to continuously enrich the conversation about the multicultural nature of this market. NO company can claim to understand Millennials without understanding multicultural nuances including African-American, Hispanic and LGBT culture. In fact, I would add that you cannot understand the traditional Boomer market either as Boomers increasingly have multicultural in-laws, grandchildren, friends and communities.
This is everyday work – moving the line of understanding in every corner of our company from hiring, product development, marketing, distribution, customer development, etc. In December, our internal newsletter featured a conversation between the African-American strategist of our multicultural center of excellence and myself. Our very candid conversation is an honest expression of how we work. We want to inspire “conversations not checklists” about our multicultural consumers.
There are several popular topics in MR today – storytelling, getting a 360-degree view of the consumer, in-the-moment research, big data + MR, data democratization – which one is influencing your work the most now? Which do you see influencing your work in the future?
Oh wow, that sounds like a list of my current projects – all of these are right now at Hallmark, not future topics. Each one can be powerful depending on my audience. Storytelling and data visualization are about making meaning – different audiences may require the meaning to be expressed in story or a visual. It’s my job to know which and be adept at both. Or some business partners love to explore the data themselves – I’m thrilled about democratizing data and letting partners such as the editors and writers pore over verbatims.
I’m most inspired about a project collaboration that includes our C space (formerly Communispace) moms’ research online community, social listening and big data. A true 360-degree view. And I anticipate delivering stories and visualized data from that exploration.
What was your journey to becoming a researcher at Hallmark?
My director introduces me as non-traditional MR hire. Before Hallmark, I worked in retail then fashion and automotive parts advertising. At Hallmark, my non-linear career path looks a bit like a meandering river. I started in merchandising/sales promotion then went into product development where I did marketing, art direction, editorial direction and quality control. A bit of a bend in the river, where I project-managed a manufacturing process conversion involving two plants. With that background, I transitioned to innovation studio management including extensive innovation facilitation work and curriculum development.
Then I came to MR as part of the Hallmark consumer understanding and insight division along with analytics, foresight and social media. I wanted to be a researcher for a long time. This role allows me to bring in all my experiences including empathy for business partners whose roles I understand because I’ve been there. It taps into my water nature but also the skills I’ve worked on as a whole in writing. Writers and researchers are so aligned. We are both not only observers but also tasked with making succinct sense of what we are observing. We are the witnesses and the voices. OK, that sounds very heavy – I do think it can be done in a very entertaining and engaging way – there is much joy and optimism in what I research after all.
The best part is, it’s not a journey with an ending – back to water again – it just keeps going through a cycle so everything grows.