From quick bites to strategic bets: How Mars and OLLY turn insights into confident decisions
Editor's note: This article is an automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity. For the full session, please watch the recording.
Actionable insights are a pillar within the marketing research and insight industry. Without that, business decisions would be made blindly and with less confidence.
In a panel discussion during the September 24, 2026, Quirk’s Virtual Sessions – DIY Research series, speakers from Voxpopme, OLLY and Mars discussed how these brands turn their insights into actionable insights.
Betsy Shaak, vice president of product at Voxpopme moderated the panel with Lumeng Jin, senior manager of human intelligence at Mars Snacking, and Liz Riley Raukohl, insights director at OLLY. The trio discussed the day-to-day reality of moving fast and the higher-level work of protecting strategic value.
Session transcript
Joe Rydholm
Hi everybody, and welcome to our session, “From quick bites to strategic bets: How Mars and OLLY turn insights into confident decisions.” I'm Quirk’s Editor, Joe Rydholm. Before we get started, let's quickly go over the ways you can participate in today's discussion.
You can use a chat tab to interact with other attendees during the session, and you can use a Q&A tab to submit questions for the presenters during the session. We'll answer as many as we have time for during the Q&A portion.
Our session today is presented by Voxpopme. Enjoy!
Betsy Shaak
Well, thank you guys for tuning in. We are so excited to be here at Quirk’s Virtual, all talking about DIY research. It's a topic that's near and dear to all of our hearts, and we're super excited to dive in.
The title of the session is, “From quick bites to strategic bets: How Mars and OLLY turn insights into confident decisions,” but really it's more like a panel conversation. So, if you have questions during the session, drop them in the Q&A section, and we'll probably pick them up at the end.
All right, admin, over. Let's go.
Today, I am very, very excited to be joined by two fantastic researchers that I've had the absolute privilege to work with over the past couple of years. Lumeng Jin, would you mind doing an intro?
Lumeng Jin
Of course. I'm Lumeng Jin. I'm with Mars Snacking as an innovation insights lead.
I'm excited to be here.
Liz Riley Raukohl
Hello, I'm Liz Riley Raukohl. I lead insights at OLLY. We make vitamins.
Betsy Shaak
And I didn't say this before, so my name is Betsy. I'm the VP of Product at Voxpopme. I spend my day nerding out about research, so super happy to be here.
All right, we are diving directly into the thing, and I think just to attach it to DIY research, everybody is really interested in moving fast, but also, I constantly hear how fast should we be moving and how do you move fast safely and appropriately?
So, to set the stage for us, I'm going to ask both of you this one. What does moving fast actually mean in your world? Can you give an example of what moving fast is and where that pressure to go faster actually comes from? Liz, do you want to start us off?
Liz Riley Raukohl
Sure. Yeah, when I think about this, it's really about being able to move with the pace at which decisions are being made.
Things are happening really quickly now, and we want to make sure that our role is to bring the consumers into the room. So, we need to be part of those conversations.
And sometimes actually that means coming live with the insights that are needed, bringing our expertise. Sometimes it means doing really quick work, but sometimes it also means planning ahead so that we're ready to move when the business is ready and being able to execute really quickly.
And then when you talk about where's that pressure coming from, I think that it's been exacerbated over the past year or two because the folks that I work with are really accustomed to using LLMs, and so that means the answers are available within minutes. And so, that's essentially their expectation now.
Lumeng Jin
Yeah, I want to echo everything Liz just said.
I think, just to add that, a lot of the pressure is definitely coming from the AI. It just reset expectations by so much. So, a lot of the question really, we have to think through is how can we still maintain a depth and the quality of the insights while we meet those speed expectations?
I think another thing to add, is just there's so many tools and information are out there, really enables everybody. If you're curious, you can go in and explore.
Like Liz was saying, everybody's so used to LLMs, they can go in and ask the question, they can get some answers themselves. So, we just have so much information, and we have the power to actually access that information in a blink of an eye.
So, I think a lot of that is really driving some of the fast-moving pace that we're experiencing right now.
Betsy Shaak
Yeah, it's almost like information overload.
There's data everywhere and when there's data everywhere, you can get an answer in a minute to anything, but how much do you make sure that it's the right answer is a different conversation.
Lumeng, this is one that's come out in a couple conversations that we've had. Can you give a 101 of your idea of nimble research and how it works for Mars?