What'cha Drinkin'? with Aryn O’Donnell
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 Quick, president of Quirk's Media. We launched this series of interviews because while we are all social distancing, we can still be social. Today I am fortunate to have Aryn O’Donnell, VP, corporate services at Fieldwork. Hello and welcome Aryn. How are you?
Aryn O’Donnell:
Hey, thanks for having me. I'm great. I mean, it feels like only yesterday, actually, it feels like a thousand years ago, we were in New York and London enjoying cocktails together.
Steve Quirk:
I know it does it. It's on the calendar. It wasn't that long ago, but it seems like forever. I totally agree. But thank you. And many of you probably recognize Aryn because her and her team are our registration sponsor and they work the desk. And so, we always look to them as they always, just like the service at Fieldwork, provide fantastic customer service. And they do that at our registration desk. So Aryn, let's start off with what are you drinking?
Aryn O’Donnell:
Well, I really wanted to master a martini for this, but alas that has not happened. So, I stuck with a simple gin and soda I have here. And I guess kind of a fun fact about this drink is it's made with some coeval gin, which is local to Chicago. And this distillery actually, when the pandemic first started, they started making sanitizer, hand sanitizer, and donating it to first responders and other people in need. So, I thought that was a really cool way to get creative with the resources they had to help out the community.
Steve Quirk:
That is fantastic. I don't have as good of a story. I am just drinking a plain rum and coke with Bacardi lime. It's plain, but it's delicious.
Aryn O’Donnell:
Yeah, transport you to a beach.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah, exactly. I just wish I was at a real beach. I know. Soon enough, soon enough. So now, while I know that obviously focus groups are kind of shuttered for right now with people self-quarantining and so forth, tell me a little bit about what you guys are working on. I know you're still actively working on behalf of your clients, tell me about the recruiting you're doing as well as the web work.
Aryn O’Donnell:
Yeah, of course. We're continuing to recruit for business, medical and consumer studies. Our facilities are not conducting in-person research right now, and we're recruiting in project managing remote as far as platform in which the interviews are being conducted on. We do have a virtual facility and online bulletin board to be able to do live interviews to do more long-term engagements. So, we've really just taken, and this has been around for over 10 years, so we're definitely no stranger to recruiting for research online and hosting research online.
I think we've really tried to take the facility experience and bring it online with our respondents. So, when we're screening them, making sure they have all the information we wouldn't send a respondent to a facility or interview without giving them directions on how to get there. And the same thing happens online and I think that's one of the ways to make it most successful for our clients. We know everybody is transitioning to a new normal, both respondents and clients. So, we're just trying to meet people where they're at to continue to conduct the research and with new tools that they may not have been familiar with before and making it as easy as possible to do that. But its operations are still happening, we're still recruiting and still hosting research.
Steve Quirk:
That's great to hear. Tell me a little bit about, you and I have talked about this kind of, the Fieldwork advantage, I mean, about how you guys work on behalf of your clients and that relationship that you guys develop to meet the needs of your clients. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Aryn O’Donnell:
Yeah, of course. So really Fieldwork's core values have always been, pre-pandemic, post-pandemic and throughout a pandemic, have been service and client partnership. We really talk about ourselves being in the service industry. And so when we're looking at experiences that we appreciate thinking through people to connect within business, we look to a lot of hotels, companies that prioritize customer service.
We think that there is so much power in a partnership in what we do. We are in the people business. And so, we really need to be able to connect with people both on the client side and the respondent side. And this I think is one of the ways to make it most successful, through clear communication and just the authentic individual touch. I was just on a call with our team before this and we were just talking about ways in which we're talking to clients and something that got brought up is, in this time, picking up the phone and calling a client and just letting the authentic show through there. Hearing the kids in the background, the dogs, whatever distraction shows up is being able to show up authentically for our clients.
We know each of them come to us with a unique need, not a one size fits all solution with what we're looking to do with our clients. And I think now more than ever that's the case. And so being able to connect with them in a genuine way to what they need has always been something that Fieldwork has prioritized and the reason that clients continue to come back to partner with us for research.
Steve Quirk:
That's great. I mean, that's a really good reminder just to have those authentic conversations with your clients. Really good stuff. And I personally, working with you guys with the event and being our registration sponsorship and you guys working with our registration at events, I can't say enough about the Fieldwork team. Just the friendliness and the level of customer service they bring to our events is amazing. So I’ve witnessed it firsthand.
Aryn O’Donnell:
A great team. I'm very proud of everyone I work with. It makes it easier to show up to work every day.
Steve Quirk:
I always say people that feel we're good, people are happy to say it. So, we always do a little thing here where we go in and we ask a random question so I'm going to dig in here. Your question is, what is one thing you are binge watching during the pandemic?
Aryn O’Donnell:
Oh man. I mean, let's talk about the advertising. Netflix right now there is very useful. I'm just, with every time I get an internet interruption, I'm thinking it's the day that Netflix is going to go down and I don’t know what I'm going to do, but I'm actually not going to, I have not been binge watching Netflix as much. I did start Little Fires Everywhere and one that's on my list actually is inspired from a speaker I saw at your event in Brooklyn. Eliza Jacobs spoke from AYTM, spoke about advertising and marketing for the Ken Burns country music documentary and that has been on my list for a while to watch. And now I have no excuse because there is a ton of time. So that is one that I will shortly be binge watching and I'm really looking forward to that.
Steve Quirk:
Well, happy help. I did not sit in on that session. I did see a little bit of the presentation when they were running through it in the speaker ready room and it did look amazing. I'm not a huge country music fan, but it did pique my interest, so that might be one I'm going to have to add to my list as well.
Aryn O’Donnell:
Alright, I'll let you know what I think when we get through it.
Steve Quirk:
All right. That sounds good. Well, I will let you go. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to have a drink with me. I really appreciate it and it's good seeing you, and hopefully within the next couple months we'll actually be able to have a drink in person.
Aryn O’Donnell:
Oh, can't wait for the day, Steve. Thanks for having us on here, it was great to see you, and thanks for all you guys do. We love being able to support your events and what you guys put out there.
Steve Quirk:
All right, well, thank you.
Aryn O’Donnell:
Thanks, Steve.