What'cha Drinkin'? an interview with Jennifer Roberton, managing director of respondi UK
Editor's note: Automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
Stewart Tippler:
Hi, and welcome to another edition of What’cha Drinkin’? My name is Stewart Tippler and I'm the European representative for Quirk's Media. I have the fortune of speaking tonight with the wonderful Jennifer Roberton, who is the MD for respondi in the U.K. Under her leadership, respondi won the MRS best data collection online for a pioneering study of attitudes among refugees in 12 countries across three continents. Illustrating that her approach to research not only benefits commercial clients but can be used to tackle and better understand complex issues of importance to society as a whole. She's also won the best paper at ESOMR Fusion back in 2018. And aside to this, Jennifer is the youngest board member of the Market Research Benevolent Charity, the only charity of its kind in the U.K, helping U.K. researchers in financial crisis, offering educational grants and also helping with their mental health and wellbeing. And also, most recently, she was appointed to the board of the Market Research Society. So huge bio there. Welcome, Jenny. How are you?
Jennifer Roberton:
I'm really well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me on.
Stewart Tippler:
Excellent, lovely. And without further ado, what's your drink this evening?
Jennifer Roberton:
What am I drinking? Well, and if you say that in an English accent, it's actually watch you're drinking, but I'm not watching my drinking at all. It's actually a rather large Aperol Spritz.
Stewart Tippler:
Nothing wrong with large measures tonight. I once again, shock horror for those who know me, I have a gin and tonic and I thought I would make it topical. So, we are drinking Brooklyn tonight. The exciting news that we've actually got is this week we announced the dates for our Quirk’s not Brooklyn event in 2021, but it's going to be Quirk’s New York. So, we're going to be in the center on the 17th and 18th of August in 2021. So, a bit of Brooklyn, gin for me, Aperol Spritz for you, which I know you love. So, cheers.
Jennifer Roberton:
Cheers. Thanks for having me.
Stewart Tippler:
So, Jenny, obviously a lot's been going on, the pandemic is very much everyone's mindset at the moment. How have you been coping? How has the team been coping during this difficult period?
Jennifer Roberton:
Yeah, it's been crazy and it is incredibly sad that the globe has lost so many people to everything that's going on down. I suppose our little world at respondi London has been doing okay. So, we actually went into lockdown a week before the government said, so we're actually on day 90 today. I'm still keeping a calendar. It's a long time. So, the team are all safe and happy and healthy and we've managed to really nail working from home, which has been amazing. I think it's been incredibly important for the facilitation of things like Zoom and those kinds of platforms that have just enabled us to still keep that kind of camaraderie together and still talk on a daily basis and making sure we keep that communication together has been amazing. It has definitely been a challenge.
I think some of us hit our lows earlier on, and some of us have hit them around now. So yeah, it's definitely been a challenge. We're incredibly lucky actually that a lot of our clients are academics. So, we've been working with people like the John Hopkins University and Harvard and Stanford doing loads of research in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic itself. Work has been incredibly busy, have seen a bit of a dip, I suppose, in kind of more of the FMCG kind of research pieces that we might usually do. Had a couple of projects put on hold that have had a bit of a dip. But yeah, we're just trying to hold it together and carry on and do everything we can really. So, it's an interesting time.
Stewart Tippler:
And I've seen that obviously you've done a number of COVID-19 reports as it were, and focusing on the impact and the effects in various different countries. Are you able to talk a bit about some of those reports and some of the findings?
Jennifer Roberton:
Absolutely. So, since lockdown happened so we're actually headquartered in Germany. We've got an office in Germany, we've got an office in Paris and then I run the London office. And what we've been doing is actually using, we track people's web behavior. So, we've been tracking kind of the pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 and having a look at what that impact has actually been on how people are navigating the web. So, every week we've been releasing what we've called a lockdown diary. Sounds a bit crazy but we're in crazy times. And just seeing the differences in behavior and stuff really.
So, things like in France for instance, people would maybe not necessarily use Google to search for recipes and home baking and things like that so often, but also we can look at things of people's word behavior in regards to the kinds of news that they're reading and consuming and the impact that then has on their attitudes towards the research that we're actually conducting as well. So yeah, it's fascinating to see, I suppose, the difference between what people tell us they do versus their web behavior of what they're actually doing and the fears that they're actually having when they're on their own, their own personal webspace.
Stewart Tippler:
And as I mentioned in the bio, obviously you're a board member for the MRBA and obviously unfortunately in these tough times there's been situations where people may have lost their jobs or have been furloughed. What has been the effect and the impact and what have the MRBA been able to do during the pandemic as such?
Jennifer Roberton:
Yeah, so for those who's who are listening that don’t know who the MRBA are, we're a charity that is, as Stewart said earlier, or you said earlier, kind of one-of-a-kind, really. So, we are really helping researchers or people, anyone that works in the U.K. market research industry in crisis. And obviously all of us are in a massive crisis right now. Like you say, there's people that have lost their jobs, they might not even be on furlough, they might have been made redundant, all sorts of things. There's a lot of great government schemes out there to help you pause your mortgage and to help you pay council tax and things like that. But it's all those day-to-day things, it's like the food and things like that, which really is for a lot of people in our industry, particularly interviewers or face-to-face interviewers that would've been out on the street interviewing and holding up all of that for us, who just have no income anymore at all.
The MRBA is fantastic in that we can give people grants and loans and pay for people's, whether it be their bills, whether it be their food, all sorts of things or whether it's that people have now got the time on their hands to spend time educating themselves. And so, we have educational bursaries as well just to support people going forward. We have amazing corporate patrons that donate money to us or raise funds for us so that we can help those in our industry that are most in need. So yeah, it's been a really interesting time to be on the board of the MRBA at the moment, but just so worthwhile and just to see, obviously I can't talk about individual cases, but just to see people being paid for or food on their table or their kids get birthday presents and things like that, it's just honestly, there's just nothing else compares really.
Stewart Tippler:
No, and I'll echo that. I know the hard work that the MRBA does obviously, I know Linda and the team, including yourself, obviously do a fantastic job. Obviously just before we went into lockdown, you had the great news that you were inducted onto the board.
Jennifer Roberton:
Yeah, it was amazing. I think overall there were 16 candidates that were up for five board places. So yeah, I was incredibly chuffed. I don't even know if that's the proper word, but just to, for everyone that I know in the industry to nominate me and believe in me and trust in me. So, I ran for the board really to just really be an advocate for mental health in our industry. There's been suicides and there's been things like that that have happened in our industry that I think many people are unaware of.
Sometimes our industry is a very, very solitary place whether it's writing reports late into the night, whether it's fieldwork on your own and things like that. So, it can be a real challenge. So that was one of my main reasons for running but also the young researchers. So, I never went to university myself, so I just want to make sure that, and I've managed to become managing director of a business and achieve to be on the MRS board and stuff. So, I just wanted to really be an advocate as well for those young researchers that maybe feel they haven't quite got everything they need and to make sure that they have everything they need to go forward.
Stewart Tippler:
Cool. And I mean anything that promotes, obviously the market research industry to the young, it's not necessarily the most, as I think Finn from ESOMR once said, it's not necessarily the most sexiest of industries out there, anything that we can do to promote and market our industry, bringing new blood in there with new ideas.
Jennifer Roberton:
Absolutely. And the Market Research Society are fantastic at that. So, all of their training courses have gone online now obviously, and kind of married up with the MRBA. We are providing grants so that people can take the MRS advanced certificate, maybe they've been furloughed so they've got that time to take it and so on.
But yeah, the effort that the MRS have put into bringing young people into the industry and stuff has been amazing. So yeah, I'll keep championing in that and it's a lovely industry to be part of. It might not be the sexiest, but it's a home that you won't want to leave.
Stewart Tippler:
Normally about this time of the interview where we pull a question out the hat, so I'm just going to do that and oh, this is a good one. Basically, what has been your best night within the market research industry? So obviously for those of you, those people who know both myself and you, know we occasionally go to the odd party and obviously networking events. What's been your best event in the market research industry?
Jennifer Roberton:
I have two actually. So, one well, obviously there's the many research club nights that I think everyone's had and lived through, ended up in karaoke bars and God knows what. And it's kind of where all the friendships are formed and stuff, which is really why it is such a lovely close-knit industry and you know, can really make some lovely friends out of it. There's one that involves McDonald's at about five o'clock in the morning, which hilarious.
Stewart Tippler:
Yeah, can't remember that one. That was in 2016. I think the ESOMAR Congress.
Jennifer Roberton:
42 cheeseburgers ordered from McDonald's in an Uber. So that was a good one. But actually there's one that's super close to my heart. So, a couple of years ago I was actually in the hospital and I was actually, we'd actually entered for the MRS Ops award in 2017. So, I think I put my submission in 2016 and I was actually in the hospital on the night that the awards happened, the awards, and I got a FaceTime from my team saying that we'd won. So, although I wasn't there, that was literally the most amazing thing to be there. But also, to let you know, have the team enjoy that kind of success of everything that we'd been through that year. And a little pat in the back for me, which was a great story.
Stewart Tippler:
Great story. Thank you so much for joining us this evening on What’cha Drinkin’? Stay safe. I look forward to the day when we're able to get actually get back together, have a few drinks. What I'll be drinking, I know what you'll be drinking. Take care, stay safe. Keep doing a great job at respondi.
Jennifer Roberton:
Cheeseburgers on me.