Q&A with the 2024 Researcher of the Year award winner, Tal Oren
Editor’s note: Tal Oren is the winner of the 2024 Researcher of the Year award, a category in the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards. The award winners were announced during a virtual celebration on November 19, 2024. To learn more about the awards, visit https://www.quirksawards.com/.
Each year Quirk’s likes to recognize a researcher that is doing amazing work both for their organizations and for the industry as a whole. 2024 is no different! Tal Oren, head of growth and learning at Talk Shoppe, has claimed the 2024 Researcher of the Year award.
Oren decided to pursue a career in marketing research because of papers he read in economics while in school. The idea of quantifying topics that were not traditionally quantified was intriguing to him.
Now, he has accomplished a lot in his career and loves to focus on the educational side of market research. He does this though his TGIF Newsletter and the Bias of the Week Initiative projects at Talk Shoppe.
Oren even contributed to an article for Quirk’s in the early days of his career.
“To be recognized by the same institution 15 years later as Researcher of the Year is truly an honor and a career highlight,” Oren said. “Thank you!”
Learn more about Oren and his journey within the marketing research industry.
What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out in marketing research?
Become a process junkie. Immerse yourself fully in each phase of the research process to really understand what happens in each one. Do this whether it falls under your list of responsibilities or not. If you’re just starting out, you must get a feel for what happens every step of the way, from the initial research design to the final bit of reporting. I can’t stress this enough: lose yourself in the A to Z.
Ask questions to better understand why a specific methodology was selected to address the business objective at hand. Why are questions written the way they are in surveys or discussion guides? How exactly do the programmers take what you wrote as a questionnaire and convert it into a survey? How are quotas set? How is sample deployed? How does data processing take survey questions and translate them to useful data tables? How are charts chosen, created or updated? Why are reports laid out the way they are? How does the editing process work between report drafts; and everything in between.
Mastering the research process will lead to more consistent outputs and more consistent quality of work overtime, which is highly valuable. More than anything, truly understanding each phase will lessen your stress when things go wrong, which will, undoubtedly, from time to time. You will be able to think of alternatives and next steps more quickly and communicate details on what can be done to remedy the situation more effectively.
How did you get your start in the marketing research industry?
My first marketing research job was as an account executive at Hall & Partners, in Los Angeles. I was hired by Shawna Orlowski – Friedman back then – and Greg Rice, who today are leaders in the industry. They took a bit of a gamble on me because I had very little experience, but I was extremely eager to apply the little research experience that I did have in academia and real estate to marketing and advertising research.
I also wasn’t living in the United States at the time – I was living in Chile – so they were extremely open-minded about hiring me. I will forever be grateful to them for that.
I wanted to go into research after reading papers by Steven Levitt and Stephen A. Dubner in my economics classes, some of which were eventually published in the book “Freakonomics.”
Those papers hit me like a drug. The idea of applying economic theories and research methods to offbeat and novel topics – cheating, sumo wrestlers, crack cocaine dealers, crooked realtors, bad parenting and the naming of children, among others – and presenting findings in a fun and sort of approachable manner felt so smart, cool and slightly transgressive. I wanted to do that.
Getting into marketing research gave me a chance to do some of that.
Quantifying brand health, brand perceptions, brand personality seemed like magic at first. These concepts were esoteric to begin with, and now we're going to attach a number to it?
These were the very early days of social media and video platforms, so there wasn’t a lot besides sales or spend data to prove, or make a case for, the value of a brand’s marketing and advertising. It felt revolutionary to do this type of research, to measure, analyze and make up stories on abstractions. I’ve been hooked ever since.
You have started many projects, such as the TGIF Newsletter and the Bias of the Week Initiative. What inspired you to create these resources?
I love the educational aspect of marketing research.
One of my responsibilities as head of growth and learning at Talk Shoppe is to create what I call a permanent state of learning and inspiration. I’m a firm believer that this state can be induced with initiatives ranging in size, from the big, structured training and fireside chats to the medium, sharing articles, news and case studies to the small, beautiful pictures, inspirational sayings and philosophical nuggets.
The TGIF Newsletter and Bias of the Week (BOTW) are two initiatives in service of this vision.
TGIF is first and foremost a fun way to wrap up the week. The weekly newsletter has relevant news stories, a “chart of the week” breakdown, content recommendations, observational humor and more. My goal is not just to provide people with timely information and a fun break from work, but also for them to get something useful out of the format.
For example, when I recap the news of the week, I’m providing a type of template for how to present data and information in an attention-grabbing, pithy and clever way. You never know what’s going to resonate deeply with someone. If one person sees something phrased or presented a certain way and is inspired to use it in their next deliverable, I can go home knowing I did my job.
The BOTW initiative was a personal obsession of mine for a while. This may sound a bit out there, but I believe that what people refer to as their attitudes, beliefs or personality is just the sum of their cognitive biases – most of which are subconscious and unbeknownst. These cognitive biases explain so much of the oddities and incongruencies in how people think and act.
To me, that’s getting at the crux of consumer behavior – why someone thinks the way they do, why they act the way they do and why the two don’t always match. So, I wanted to create a series that would help people better understand these cognitive biases, so that they could better interpret market research data and help round out the coveted “why?” analysis we’re constantly tasked with.