What'cha Drinkin'? with Finn Raben
Editor's note: Automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
Dan Quirk:
Hello, welcome to another edition of What’cha Drinkin’ from Quirk's Media. I'm Dan, VP, Marketing. Today, we're interviewing Finn Raben, director general of ESOMAR. Well, hi Finn. How are you this morning? Well, I guess it's morning for me, but afternoon for you.
Finn Raben:
Hey, good morning, Dan. And yes, unfortunately it's a very wet evening here in Amsterdam, but we've had two weeks of absolutely fantastic rain. As you can hear, it's a little bit blocked, but that's because I'm also a hay fever sufferer, so the rain actually is a godsend for me. It's a good thing, unfortunately for the rest of the population, but good for me.
Dan Quirk:
Right. Well, I have to start out right away with what you're drinking.
Finn Raben:
So. Well, I'm in Holland, right, the home of Geneva, and so there is a sibling rivalry between Geneva and gin. Geneva is usually made from a grain so rye or wheat, but gin of course can be made from anything. I'm a great gin fanatic actually. So the whole kind of poplar movement into fancy gins is just straight up my street. So today I am drinking a gin and tonic with a gin, which comes from Bangkok, Thailand, believe it or not. This is made by an Australian gentleman who moved to Thailand a number of years back. It's a small little distillery, it's called Iron Balls and it's a fantastic gin. So anybody who's in Bangkok, I can certainly recommend getting a bottle of that.
Dan Quirk:
Oh, I wish I had picked some up when I was there at the ESOMAR APAC. Was that two years ago maybe?
Finn Raben:
Yeah, well, that's where that bottle comes from, believe it or not. And it's my last one, so I'm sparingly using it.
Dan Quirk:
Well, I'm drinking, so it's 11am here, so it's really a little early to drink, but I'm drinking RumChata, which is a cream rum. It's a dairy rum, very cinnamon flavored so it's a little bit like having melted cinnamon ice cream. Normally I would put it in coffee and that's what I was going to do, but actually it's pretty delicious straight up.
Finn Raben:
Well, cheers.
Dan Quirk:
Yes, cheers. So I wanted to ask you, so ESOMAR is a global association, more so than any other association, and in this time when we can't travel, how are you creating and facilitating the community of your members?
Finn Raben:
Well, so as you say, the lockdown, whether that's the social distancing, is a real problem for us because usually it's through our events and means of meeting people in the different countries that we get to build that sense of community and learn what's going on. Having said all of that, even though we can't be there in person as a global community of researchers, our combined knowledge and our combined expertise is vast.
What we're trying to do at the moment is facilitate the getting together of that knowledge in various and on various platforms because we think that the body of knowledge and experience that we can bring to the problem will help any company or any government chart a better way out of these circumstances than if they were not to do any research at all. So at the minute, we are creating a number of different platforms and trying to get as many occasions together as possible to get that community meeting together, virtually sharing experiences, sharing past papers that were done because, for example, a couple years back when Asia had SARS, the body of knowledge and experience they have and how to come out of an epidemic and continue to trade is a useful frame of reference for these times. So we're trying to ensure that that knowledge can be shared to a wider audience and to a wider buying public or users of research as we possibly can.
Dan Quirk:
Yeah. Well, I think you bring up a great point. We've all worked with data. I mean, that's what marketing research is, and boy is data important now more than ever, I mean, certainly the scientific data, but then also the data on what consumers are going to want after this, what we need to do to as an industry to get out of this to get back to work. It's definitely important.
I want to move on now to the little fun part of the this too, right? I have a box with questions here. I'm going to pick one at random and read you a question. Here's one that I think a lot of people in a lot of different industries are wondering, if you could have another career outside marketing research, what would it be?
Finn Raben:
So I have to be honest and say it's a draw. There are two, right? So ever since I was about three years old, I wanted to be a pilot but my eyesight let me down. I'm very shortsighted, so I wasn't able to qualify to learn how to fly a plane. So that'll be my, that's the one. The other one is that I'm a huge rugby fanatic have been all my life, but I'm again probably too skinny to be a decent rugby player. So I need to put on a few pounds, visit the gym and see if I could get that career going as well. But they would be the two that I would really have loved to give a shot.
Dan Quirk:
Yes, I could see it. It might be a little late for rugby too just say, oh well.
Finn Raben:
I'm not so sure about that. I mean, Ray Pointer, who we both know very well, played rugby just up until a couple years ago. In fact, he may still be playing so interesting, but I think it's too late for me, certainly. But well.
Dan Quirk:
I hope to interview him and maybe I'll find out more about that. What's interesting about it, so as much as I know that the marketing research industry is suffering along with so many others, I mean even both of the careers you're talking about, there's not a lot of pilots flying right now and there's not a lot of rugby players playing right now. So we are all in this together.
Finn Raben:
Never a truer word. And I think you mentioned earlier how important it is to look at the data and if there's a message that we should be kind of underlining is if you have data at your hands, use it because it will help you think about things differently. And as I said, hopefully chart a better way out of these trying and challenging times.
At the same time, I think we mustn't get bogged down. I was chatting with Michelle Ganz of Mars earlier on today, and she said at a point of time, we've got to stop worrying about the now and looking towards the future and trying to think about the positives and what can be developed and the good things that will come out of this, however small and few there may be. But we've got to start looking to the future very quickly. Otherwise we do also run the risk of getting bogged down in the fear of what we're currently going through. And data will help us do that.
Dan Quirk:
Well, I think we should maybe end it there on that positive note. So I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
Finn Raben:
Thank you, Dan. It's been an absolute pleasure and as I said, I hope that sometime soon I'll have a chance to share a gin and tonic or a RumChata with you in person somewhere. Maybe also just take a moment to wish everyone who's watching this hope that they're happy, safe and healthy. Hope that they haven't lost anyone through the disease, and if they have, obviously to express that our thoughts and wishes are with them all in these tough times. So thanks for having us and hopefully catch up with you soon.
Dan Quirk:
Yes, thank you so much. Bye.