What'cha Drinkin'? with Adam Froman
Editor's note: Automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
Steve Quirk:
Hello and welcome to another edition of What’cha Drinkin’? I'm Steve Quirk, president of Quirk's Media. My guest is Adam Froman, CEO of Delvina. Hello Adam and welcome. So nice to see you. Let's start right off the bat with, tell me, what are you drinking?
Adam Froman:
I've finished off my bottle of Colonel Taylor Bourbon, a nice Kentucky bourbon. I'm enjoying it with you today and I’ve been drinking too much of this over the past nine weeks.
Steve Quirk:
That's all right. To be expected, I guess a little bit. I am having, this is from the city I live in, it's called Lakeville Brewing Company. They are a local brewery and my wife and I happen to be friends with some of the co-owners and I'm enjoying their Nehi Cream Ale. So, oh, I'm not really much a beer drinker, but this is pretty good, what I would call a traditional American beer.
Adam Froman:
Well, now that I'm in my fifties, I'm finding it harder than I was with all these incredible microbreweries sparking up. I'm kind of missing out because beer just bloats me. So yeah, I'm better with the hard liquor or the wine.
Steve Quirk:
The older I get, it's like after every drink I have to at least have a couple chasers of water. Thanks again for taking the time. The whole world is undergoing change due to COVID-19 and you and I have talked a little bit about the pace of change and so forth. You made the comment to me that this is just kind of normal for you, that in the way you've set your business up and the world you come from, change is just part of it, the rapid change. So can you talk a little bit about that change and how your company handles it, embraces it for someone who maybe the change of pace that's happening now is harder for them to handle?
Adam Froman:
Right. So my company's 22 years old now. So having really started my company and the .com boom, and really it was driven as a digital strategy and customer experience design firm. It was really about looking at how digital technologies were changing, how people think, how they communicate and then to help companies understand behaviors of people using technology so that they can build customer experiences in the digital channel. And that was really the first, probably 12, 15 years of our start. But one of the opportunities that I've had, because I've been so involved in it, is our government in Canada has really created a lot of great programs to support innovation. So if you're making a dollar of profit, there's many programs that would match it with $2-$3 of government funding that you would be reinvesting back into R&D and your innovation. So, I have always built my company knowing that technology is constantly evolving, how people are consuming content and how people are using technology has constantly changed. And I feel very privileged because it hasn't stopped over the past probably five years.
Where we've really focused ourselves is really on data collection. While we had our consulting business, we started asking Canadians, when we launched our automated research platform, what I really, we had to not no longer be simply consultative to help people understand how to adapt, but we took all that experience and that understanding and our continued desire to invest in R&D to really focus on data collection. And the reason data collection is such an area that backs into research beautifully is anyone in the digital space who've been along as long as I have realized pretty early on that every digital touchpoint collects data.
Whether you're inviting someone to do a survey or just tracking something, like if they're using their technology. But it's taken a long time to first understand how to harness that properly, how to do it in a very ethical matter that that respects privacy of the individual, which are the credos of market research, and then how do you turn that data into insight so companies can make better decisions. And so that change has always been, every time I think that there's a technology out there that is going to change the world, another one comes afterwards. But what doesn't change, and this is the constant that I live my career by, is the strategy behind data collection hasn't changed. The strategy in market research about having data, whether it's qualitative data or quantitative data, has been the same. The means of which you collect that data have changed, but for some reason, and I don't understand it, the market research industry has held on to the modes of data collection that defines the industry.
So, you know, see right now what's going on with the pandemic, every single qual facility is shut down pretty much. Well, we've been sort of saying, I think it's sad for these companies to have to go into this pause right now, but many of these companies didn't look beyond traditional qualitative research of what their facilities would be used for in a digital age. I think that's the change that people struggle with. Many have been comfortable with what they've been doing and as a company we've just never been comfortable doing that. We've invested millions of dollars in constantly reinvesting in R&D. I take a significant part of my profits and sink it back in. And we're always looking around the corner of what's going to be the next change, not just from a technology point of view, but more importantly, how is it going to change the way people can make decisions. And so that's what kind of keeps me sane in this world, it's always changing.
Steve Quirk:
I'm going to change it up one more time. We like to ask some fun questions here. So I have to ask you, if you were not doing what you're doing right now as CEO, what would you be doing? What other career? You could just wave a magic wand and have whatever career you wanted. What would it be?
Adam Froman:
Professional golfer.
Steve Quirk:
Ooh, okay. You're a golfer.
Adam Froman:
I'm not good. I'm not good enough to be a professional golfer, but that would be, I love golf and if I could play it.
Steve Quirk:
Are you pretty good?
Adam Froman:
Yeah, I'm, I'm like a nine, but it's sort of, but not near. And also I'm way past the age of ever caring anymore, but golf is my therapy and it's my release and it's I've been playing since I was 15 years old. And it's a wonder, a strategy game to me. It's a great time to spend with people and I actually love the game. So if I didn't, it would be just playing golf all the time on tour. But you'd have to, there's no doubt that that's, I'm just going to play it for leisure.
Steve Quirk:
That is all right. That's great. I'm a horrible golfer. I tell people if the hole is 350 yards, I walk 800. But I love it because I love being out. Same thing, I love being in a foursome group and just having a good time. I rarely even actually keep track of my score, which drives my friends who are on the golf course with me up the wall.
Adam Froman:
Yeah, I'm not taking you out. Don't worry.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah. So hopefully we can play golf sometime soon. So with that, I will let you go. Thank you so much, Adam, for taking your time and for all you do for the industry, it's greatly appreciated and hopefully we'll see you in person real soon.