Lenny Murphy: What is changing in the industry as a result of the COVID-19 situation? Business levels, shifts in methodologies, new client priorities, etcetera, etcetera. Why don’t we start with you, Elizabeth? What do you guys see?
Elizabeth Morgan: Sure. So, just as a little bit of context, Lenny. As said, we make platforms that help insights and marketing teams pull together and organize all of their existing research and insights and knowledge assets so that they can reuse and leverage everything that they own.
You can imagine that in these times with less fieldwork, there is ever more pressure to make the most of what you have and there is also – we’re seeing across our client organizations that there is more and more demand from the business for guidance from the insights team and that’s interesting because we are dealing with massive past resources and the question is what is the currency and relevance of the shelf life of those insights. So, for example, we’re very proud to serve Pradeep and his team with the people world platform across Unilever.
That’s a massive asset platform, maybe a billion dollars of past research but the question then becomes, how do you leverage what is past with the current situation? This is where we see this major and accelerated shift to the role of insights managers or sense makers, so everyone is really tasked at this time to work with their platforms to understand what they already know from the past and then to layer fresh knowledge, breaking knowledge about the COVID-19 circumstances and the impact on the business with that information so they can provide curated good sense to the business in this very difficult time.
Lenny Murphy: That makes sense now since Pradeep, since Elizabeth kind of called on you inadvertently, from a client’s perspective at Unilever, what do you see?
BV Pradeep: There are some things that are happening. I’m also talking from a perspective of generally in the industry. I’m also using my SMR hat, looking at from a client and the SMR hat. The key thing is, here, I think there are some dramatic changes happening in terms of what actually dealing with speed means in terms of response. The second thing that’s happening is in terms of people getting much sharper in terms of the questions to which you ideally need answers for decision making as compared to nice to have.
So, because a lot of information which we collected on surveys, another one is comfort giving kind of information. So, we keep saying is it really mattered that we need this information because I need to move fast under the changing situation.
The third thing I think is, it’s become very clear that if you’re a non-digital business or any aspects of the business are nondigital, that is going to be trouble going forward. So, for example, a lot of – without picking any names, there are some people or agencies who have relied on a lot of face-to-face recruitments and data collection, etcetera, are having lots of challenges because you get lots of breaks in the data. So, it being digitalized end-to-end is almost the first option rather than – or maybe I should consider that or we should think about it, so by default, to do everything else.
So, that’s probably going to stay with us. In terms of knowledge and collation which Liz talked about, how much can we learn from what we know becomes very critical and people become very sharp in their questions. Why are we collecting data on things which we already know, but at the same time, there’s this question at this point as we speak whether what will be the behaviors of consumers in the world going forward.
Which ones will stay and which ones will morph? That’s the really difficult question which people are asking. There’s category consumption habits, whether it is devious in terms of what you do at home, versus how that form is a big thing because I think this is the world’s largest experiment in terms of behavior change.
Lenny Murphy: Yes.
BV Pradeep: It’s a massive thing that people have had to do things which they would never think of doing like eating, snacking, along with the family in the home, more regularly. Taking out ice cream from the freezer instead of going to a parlor. Learning cooking. My daughter has been refusing to learn cooking, but now she is left with no option. She is stuck in New Jersey, New York and went to New Jersey which I think they have such as now she has to learn how to cook because it’s survival now. So, I think, which is – and in this process, we suspect that some of these behaviors people feel that we have to live with it which has severe implications on how we tie it with consumers, how do we engage them, and how to communicate with them. For example, people, even all the people who have never tried online shopping or desperately wanted to do that, although I think stock is not the way it is.
I think the whole thing is a big change which is coming in. So, we need to think about online first – so that makes dramatic changes in terms of how things, categories, and brands will help you engage which is everybody is thinking off their feet at this moment. Even the full concept of social distancing is not for a 3 four-week period for sure whether it’ll become a new normal, we don’t know, but some other people have a sense that the period of is stronger. Maybe this will become a practice of how we engage with ourselves. So, this is frighteningly difficult times, but also worth recognizing the businesses that it has an opportunity size based on what we’ll look at it, how you look at it and how you will respond. The other one is of course, we can moan and groan about this and say, “What the hell is this?” etcetera, etcetera, but that will probably take us down a really different track which I think all of us have to avoid. The businesses have course the shock period and now coming to terms on that how do we do things differently.
Lenny Murphy: That’s fantastic, Pradeep. A lot of that I want to circle back to. So, you mentioned, obviously, the shift towards purely digital data collection. Michael, I would actually like to tag you in because I know when Dscout first started, one of your plans was doing secret shopping and in-person real-world kind of missions.
Michael Winnick: Sure.
Lenny Murphy: What are you guys seeing now?
Michael Winnick: Yes, I think we are seeing generally – I think we’re lucky, obviously, as Pradeep mentioned, we are a full end-to-end digital platform, I think, and we are kind of like Zoom-like service in a way, right? So, kind of remote qualitative research, it’s kind of our bread-and-butter. In general, we really benefit from some of the changes as researchers are retooling and we have hundreds of subscribers to the Dscout platform and for our existing subscribers, some of them are obviously really adversely impacted by current events.
For airline subscribers, the idea of observing how people are traveling now is probably not high on their agenda, but for many of our other subscribers, we are seeing really rapid response and there are dozens and dozens of projects going on Dscout as we speak. People that have retooled their research and they’re trying to understand what’s kind of going on in this moment and then ultimately, what that will mean. So, we are seeing pretty rapid changes and a lot of research activity amongst our existing subscriber base.
Then, we are also seeing lots of demand and we just did a webinar last week on remote research methods and I think we had over a thousand signups for maybe 400 or 500 people which for us is a large webinar compared to our other ones. So, I’d say that there’s a lot of interest. People are trying to adapt. I think it is really important. I guess, the one comment I would say is I think that there’s a lot of work that’s up in the air, but this is such a critical time I think for being a researcher because Pradeep mentioned, this is the world’s largest social experiment, but it is probably the biggest dislocation in daily life that we will all have ever experienced. I think it’s such an important time to just understand what people are thinking, what they’re doing, how they’re feeling, and to start understanding kind of what all of that means.
I’d lastly say, on our own fronts, we have been doing our own research which we have been publishing and it’s been a really meaningful project just to understand people’s personal stories, so we did something called the COVID Diaries that we’re running as a company and I think it’s been hard, but I think emotionally gratifying and it feels important to be able to tell people’s stories about what’s going on right now.
Lenny Murphy: Yes. The SI Association did a survey last week they released that and said that a third of all qualitative shifted online just like that in March. I think that’s probably undercounting. So, to everybody’s point, the qual, that’s probably one of their shifts that where I see being permanent once folks adapt to digital solutions, they have broken into that barrier, they’ll continue to use those and I think that needs qualitative in person traditional, qualitative will go away by any stretch of imagination, but I definitely think that it won’t be as big as it was. So, Hunter, you guys focus on understanding non-conscious and emotions and how that fits into a cultural context. So, what are you seeing?
Hunter Thurman: Yes, there’s a lot of I think convergence here. So, we’re really seeing – there’s kind of a hesitancy depending on category. There’s kind of this hesitancy of let’s wait until everything gets back to normal and I think that was kind of last week. Now like this week everyone’s gone, “Hold on, that’s not really wise thinking because nothing’s ever going to be exactly the same as it was.” It sounds like you recently wake up and say, “That was a weird dream. Okay, well back to it.” There are going to be these enduring shifts. So, we’re really seeing kind of two buckets. One really relates to one Elizabeth and Pradeep were talking about from pressure and from adversity comes invention sometimes.
So, looking at these multimillion dollars’ worth or billion dollars’ worth of past research existing data really that a lot of organizations have, we’ve seen this kind of collision of like the old and the new. So, what I mean by that is you look at these repositories of all the old data and then you look at those through the lens of like some of the fancier things like natural language processing, augmented intelligence, computer-based insights development and putting those the kind of dusty round file of old data whether it’s videos, text files, or whatever through a natural language. Probably, we’ve been doing this using a natural language processing approach and then correlating it to our database of non-conscious measures and that’s a really effective way sort of suspended from the odd context of right now, to continue with kind of the core business objectives like the things you’d want to know about your business or the agendas that researchers had prior to all this COVID-19 stuff.
That’s been kind of an interesting illustration of this openness that everybody, consumers and industry alike, have to try new things. It’s sort of an interesting application of those really leading-edge software-based coding and patterning with all this stuff that otherwise, would’ve been sort of left in the rearview mirror. Then, there’s the second kind of bucket of, “Okay, what are going to be the durable outcomes of COVID-19?” As everybody has said, that’s the hard part. I think the big thing is, and this is where the non-conscious piece for our bit comes in, is look, we’re in a weird context. That it’s all about context.
In looking at all the different things that people have tried, done, and shifted to online and our cooking and all the stuff regardless of data source you use, obviously, things are happening differently. The way to diagnose and predict what’s going to change is not by looking at what they’re doing. It’s by looking at what their experience is with it. So, stuff that happens that now that gives them a logical rational output that says like, “This makes sense. This is a better way of doing things or has a really high sensory experiential component that’s really rewarding.” Those will endure. The things that are socially valuable like the things that, “Hey, this was really fun with my family. We really enjoyed that together. It really helped us bond over it,” or the things that give people status. Anything that’s based on sort of winning, some of 6 the gaming things, and stuff like that. Those are not going to endure as strongly when we talk about these four motivations. The things that people are for us then to trying, that serve the more rational and a more experiential, those will endure. The things that people are trying that serve the more social or the more status-driven, those will not endure. So, from the non-conscious world, there are some predictable elements that give us a thread to what will stick and what won’t once the context shifts out of this really odd state.
Lenny Murphy: That’s great. I want to circle back around. We all touched on interest in the future state things, I want to get there, but I want to ask one more question since you’re all senior leaders. How are you personally adapting and how is your business adapting to deal with the new normal? Michael, why don’t we start with you? How are you dealing with volume? What new skills are you learning?
Michael Winnick: Sure, yes. I think the biggest skill for us right now is just how to manage, lead, and support our team in such a period of obviously, dislocation, but also just ambiguity. As we talked about positive forces acting on our business, there’s also other things going on. I think for us, it’s been shortening our planning timelines and kind of really saying, “Okay, guys. We’re going to take this a couple of weeks at a time here and we’re just going to get really focused.” We’re going to in terms of how we communicate as a team, obviously, as a full going from being in an office together most of the time to fully remote. That’s another big adjustment. So, I think it’s mostly adjusting communication cadences and then making sure that we are really attentive as managers and leaders to reach out and to talk to people and probably, I’d say to over-communicate. For instance, a normal week our leadership team might get together formally once a week, now we do it three times a week. A normal month, we might have a once a month company meeting. We’re doing those twice a week, right? So, I think there’s just a lot of little communication adjustments. I say personally, my biggest adjustment is obviously, I realized that I spend now all of my time looking at a screen. So, I have to turn off the screen and I got to change. I got to go stand, go walk around, go sit somewhere else and just make sure I’m not staring at a screen for 10 hours a day.
Lenny Murphy: Pradeep, what are some of your perspectives within the research organization, Unilever as a whole? How are you and all your business happening?
BV Pradeep: Yes. Thanks, Lenny. I think couple of things. One is given the law of global nature of my job, a lot of times most meetings are at global teams across countries, so you are on a laptop or on a video conference kind of thing. That is sort of fine. It’s just that it’s strange that you are sitting at home and doing this instead of in the office, but anyway, working from home was one or two days in the week we used to do normally, so that’s not a thing. The key thing there for us is the fact that first, you need to ensure that you understand that people are going through – the empathy of understanding what people are going through and trying to manage the home life, work-life balance because when kids are at home and they have to take care it and my appreciation for the teachers has gone up tremendously in this period.
Lenny Murphy: Yes.
BV Pradeep: I think they’re actually literally doing two jobs at the same time. So, they may be at home, but they are doing two jobs, we need to recognize that. So, we need to be flexible and so a lot for these things rather than, “Oh, we are not focused on this because of whatever,” so people do have to get that frequently. The second one is the whole thing about dealing with ambiguity. It’s a big thing because quite often in a business situation, we want a little amount of certainty, decision this thing so that you can be clear and caught that this thing will happen the way it is, but dealing with ambiguity is one at an emotional level because some people are very uncomfortable having this, but that’s the way it is, so we need to get used to it. The other one is how do we pivot and change if something changes and we should almost be expecting change. I mean if something goes perfectly as we planned, then either your plan was really simple or whatever, but you could expect. So, I think the ability to pivot, change, and not get stressed out or had a plan like this, it’s sort of no, not going in this thing. No, so what? We change the plan. So, the plan may change every day.
It may change every month or every hour, based on what we are looking at. So, I think it’s a different mindset of how you deal with it and of course, as Michael was saying, I think you need to be very conscious of the fact that you need to give your body some kind of exercise in a much more conscious way because what I begin to realize being like this at home is the fact that there was an exercise in the fact I used to go catch a train, go to London, go on 8 the underground, get up to climb those escalators and staircases. So, I think there is an unconscious level of activity and walking in and out of offices. I mean, there’s a conscious level of activity which sort of uses exercise, but if you are at home, you suddenly realized, “Holy shit, this is” – and then you suddenly think there is extra time and you fill up with meetings. That’s probably the worst thing because then you have meetings and the time you choose for traveling is also now filled with meetings. That’s what happened in the first week. Then I said, “No, no, I need to block this off.” So, interesting behaviors and maybe we need to find a new normal with this.
Lenny Murphy: I have noticed an increase – every connection I make with other humans is more meaningful. Even when we started this call, the five minutes of every call right now regardless is how are you doing? Right. There’s a sense of compassion and need just to feel more – not just more connected, but I think friendly to folks which has been really interesting. Hunter, since you delved in the world of emotions, are you seeing anything like that in addition to other adaptations that you’re making?
Hunter Thurman: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think a lot of those points, Pradeep just made are obviously spot on. We’re all feeling it and getting it. There’s a lot of value in that. There is this big anthropological evolutionary biological model that basically says and if you look at past decades, that we’re headed into this epoch, loosely a decade of basically, personal reflection. Some of those words like mindfulness. Thinking about maybe we should create a new normal. Basically, reflecting on things. Looking at the way we do things and giving them like a really authentic reconsideration of being open in new things. That’s something that has been predicted for the 20s for some time, and this is an accelerant into that. This is like a bandaid rip of, “Okay, do it now,” like the transition into that whether you like it or not. So, all those things about reconsidering, reevaluating the way we do things are all very much in line with a lot of psychological and even biological impulses that we at the population level are going to be filling. As I said, it’s not going to change the future, but it’s just going to accelerate us into that. Those introspective components will be lasting and will in some context, shift our behavior permanently.
Lenny Murphy: It’s good stuff. Again, we’ll circle back around this in just a second. Elizabeth, how are you adapting? How’s the business adapting? Anything that you’re learning through this?
Elizabeth Morgan: I think as everyone has said, a lot of daily and regular communications. I would also add with cameras. We aren’t on camera today, but I think that’s an adjustment we’ve all had after a lot of Skyping. We’re now using every opportunity to have visual contact with people at a distance. I think also, we’re looking for opportunities to do things to support our engineering organizations, so looking at how they can support also with folding initiatives for example, so donating idle computing power to the scientific and research community to advance their work. Of course, we’re shifting all of our thought leadership exchange to virtual formats like today, but we’re proactively looking out for opportunities to get our clients and thought leaders inside organizations talking amongst one another. We’re also doubling down if you like on the specific patterns for verticals and the specific challenges for verticals within our client base. So, bringing together our pharma healthcare life science clients so that they can address specific needs. I think one of the very big issues we see at the moment and it goes back again to how do you leverage past research which I would argue maybe isn’t so dusty, but it certainly needed to be seen in context with the current and very difficult situation we’re all in and here, I think, is a huge need to leverage industry news. Syndicated sources, breaking daily updates and while all of the professionals we serve are grappling with a lot of generic news. One of the things we’re doing is helping our clients to use AI to personalize news delivery and make sure that business line relevant COVID news is coming in and being integrated with research and information from other sources, so that they have a fresh lens to the insights or assets, they’re on. I think that’s an important pivot also.
Lenny Murphy: Yes. There’s some shortage of information flowing right now actually…
Elizabeth Morgan: Exactly.
Lenny Murphy: Michael, you mentioned, you’re doing your own study and good Lord, I think I probably get 10 different emails a day from different research companies that are conducting their own research on things and there’s probably more than that. So, 10 that’s really interesting. Now, let’s switch as we kind of wrap up. What comes next? I think we’ve all mentioned various sundry ideas and for me, I’ve been thinking about very pragmatic components.
How do supply chains change? I would expect that we see a decentralization of supply chains and a focus on our local communities to be a little more self-sufficient. Same with manufacturing. I think globalization is going to take a pretty big hit as more countries focus on making sure that they’re manufacturing base is there to pull in resources needed for things like this. Obviously, the shift towards virtual, how much of that sticks? I would expect that kind of like what we’re talking about with breaking the barrier for virtual call, breaking the barrier for many companies work from home, those are probably going to stick, and there will be a great emphasis of those types of things. People are working and living virtually in a different way. Now, that’s all my two cents kind of top of mind. Now I’d like to hear from you, guys. So, Hunter, we hadn’t called on you first yet. So, why don’t you start us off? What do things look like six months, nine months, or a year down the road just based on what you’re seeing?
Hunter Thurman: Yes, so I was talking to a neighbor who was walking by. In safe distance, we talked about what will happen to companies like Macy’s, traditional retailers? We say, “Well, one end of the spectrum, everybody will buy everything online and be used to that and that’ll be the end of it. On the other end of the spectrum, you could argue that people will rush out and want to go back in the stores. It could be this huge boom for traditional retail, but which is it?” The short answer is the things and working remote.
Working remotely has always made a lot of sense. To Pradeep’s points, it cuts down on commuting, on pollution and there’s lots of things like that, but then in a lot of cases, it hasn’t felt as good. Experientially, there’s no replacement for face-to-face. People talk about that. I mentioned this a moment ago, but when you look at all the behavior shifts, the simple answer is the things that either make a lot of rational practical sense and comparatively to the way you used to do things make more sense to you. Those are likely will stick and the things that feel really good, so like we’ve been using Slack as our communication platform and we’ve never used the call feature because we’re in the office together. Now, I don’t know if you guys use it, but you can start these instantaneous really high-quality video conferences, almost like an IM call and it’s been really effective for us.
Experientially, it worked really well, so that’s 11 something that it felt good using all five senses. Like it feels effective and efficient. That’s something is likely would stick. It’s sort of like the facts and the feels. Those are these two things that are sort of in congress, but those two factors are the ways people are going to decide what they’ll continue doing. As I said, it won’t be the more socially driven things that sticks. So, that’s a couple of just sort of durable, predictable lenses to hold up to all these different behaviors that stand a lot of fact-based reasons that they’ll be the difference-makers in the coming weeks and months.
Lenny Murphy: I like that context. That’s great. Elizabeth, how about you?
Elizabeth Morgan: Well, actually, what I want to do is focus on the future for insights managers because that’s the heartland of our use of communities. I think, for some time now, we’ve been all talking as an industry about the role of the insights manager as someone that performs research or is someone that performs these sensemaking capabilities. So, from my perspective, one of the good things about these terrible current circumstances is that insights managers are being approached by more people across the business for advice and guidance on how to navigate all the information at their disposal. It’s also setting the stage for insights managers to develop storytelling, curatorial and sense-making skills. I think as we look at what sticks in the future, I think we’re all hoping that we can support insights managers in becoming better sense makers, better storytellers, people that can really guide the business in whatever only going to become much more complex and noisy information environments.
Lenny Murphy: Yes, I couldn’t agree more. I think that the role of insights is becoming more and more vital to the organization. At least, I hope that is the case. We have also seen an amazing amount of analysis done. There’s a group called Research Wonks which is a lot of senior-level, kind of heavy hitters in the industry, mostly from the advertising and media space that have just dived into the data available here and exploring different models and they’ve been right. More right in some cases and the stuff coming from the government which I hate to say, but it’s a bit of my experience. Just showing the value of that skillset, right? Of understanding information, looking at context and making predictions. I think that’s the one that’s going to stick. Pradeep, on that note, what do you think will happen from a 12 consumer behavior standpoint since Unilever is a CPG company and your own sense of how these things evolve in the future?
BV Pradeep: Yes, there are lots of crystal ball gazing going on at this time and everybody has a point of view. It’s just probably right and good. Somebody can’t say who’s wrong, but to start with, I think the first thing is people will realize the value of local communities.I think that will probably be and less of globalization and there will be more local communities, how they can connect better locally, shop better locally, support local communities or farmers, because there is sense of togetherness which is coming in as a consequence of this, of the nature of mutual support that people will have to rely on in this kind of times. So, I think that may change some of the things. The other one is if you could E everything, then probably the need for you to go out and far off to do anything, you can always do whether it is shopping, whether it is conversations, whether it’s engagement, whether it is even entertainment. I don’t know whether online gaming and other things may take another lead to approach it. Will virtual reality become real reality now in the future?
Lenny Murphy: Yes.
BV Pradeep: HTC did something last week at the global conference with virtual reality from Taiwan. I think that may be another thing and our CEO was saying that he may in the future travel much less than he has done in the past. I think those are – so, the whole thing about what we can do by electronically, it’ll probably be on the mindset for our people. The whole area of trust is a big thing which will change. People would be a little more demanding of whom they can trust and whom they cannot in this because given the uncertainties in the world and so, yes, in terms of consumption, I think the whole area of health hygiene will probably resurrect itself quite significantly fit in this. So, far in a way, there was a thinking in our part of the world in the developed markets, we would assume that the whole concept of disease was for more the emerging markets, but now it looks like you could be tracked wherever you are.
Michael Winnick: Do you want me to jump in, Lenny, for a little bit?
Lenny Murphy: Yes, Michael. Pradeep, sorry you got cut off. We’ll circle back around to you in a minute to finish your thought. Yes, Michael, since you’re doing this, the study with consumers, are you getting the sense of what the future may look like?
Michael Winnick: Not yet. I mean, I’d say that I kind of have few thoughts and then I think one is probably something that it’s just the summation of what everybody is saying which is I think that the change like this will accelerate disruptions that were already happening. So, to a degree that your industry was going through a disruption, you’re going to see that moving faster, so movie theaters, shopping malls, retail stores, right? There are a lot of parts of life that were already going through disruptions, so I think we’re going to see accelerations around. I think that’s like kind of a general belief I have about how the future will play out. I’d say specifically, for research and I guess that does tie into some of the kind of remote research tools, repositories, and aspects like that that I think are on the rise on research, but this is specifically if we kind of think about we’re in this period of time which is obviously, very, very different.
At some point, probably in the not too distant future, we’re going to be on some sort of path that looks like a road to recovery and I think that road will be a while, but I’m certainly not qualified to make predictions about how long. I think in that, there are going to be so many research questions because in that road to recovery, businesses like Unilever or any other business are going to be faced with asking the question, what does X look like now? What does buying a car look like now? What does entertainment look like now? That period of now is probably not going to be weeks. It’s going to be many, many months. So, I think that there’s going to be a huge thirst for understanding how pretty much, every aspect of consumer life or experiences are changing in this kind of liminal period between where we are today which I think is really kind of in this still and kind of completely dislocated shock at the moment to whatever version of normal there is, when that happens on the other end. Like in that period, it’s going to be an incredible time and important time to do research. Lenny Murphy: Yes. I think we lost Pradeep, unfortunately. So, here’s one of my other predictions or maybe he’s coming back. Better broadband connectivity, maybe an investment Google Fiber will now rollout.
Michael Winnick: The internet has held up very well overall, I’d say.
Lenny Murphy: The internet has held up very well. Pradeep, since we lost you for a second, we were discussing that increase in broadband is one of the things that we will see so we don’t have interruptions like just happened with you.
BV Pradeep: I hope so. I think our CEO is wanting to – I was saying, there are some 16 million times we used Microsoft Teams or something like that in a day. I think it’s incredible how the thing is. Sorry, I don’t know when I broke off. I don’t know how much you were able to hear what I said.
Lenny Murphy: You dropped when you were talking about an increase, focus on localization and local communities and then we lost you.
BV Pradeep: Oh, I see. Okay. A quick one on the other thing that you see is everything will be E everything kind of things. It will consequently when people will look at the option of not really traveling or meeting people as much as they can do electronically, they can do it and meeting will be really for precious moments, precious people. The whole thing about contactless culture will be a key thing. I think people would not like it because of the health indulging connotations which have resurrected one of the points we’re seeing was the whole concern about hygiene use to be on developing and emerging markets concern kind of thing, it reminds the people. We in the developed world actually should not be worrying about it, but this had the E set the whole thing that anywhere in the planet, you could be heard if you are not careful enough.
This means the whole amount of focus, the amount of expenditure which people have in terms of ensuring that they are protected will go up. So, the whole area of the protection industry and say, you’ll take it from masks to whatever new meaning to it including apps and other ones, whatever else they can think of, yes. The other point there is that trust will be very different thing because people begin to not trust anyone because everybody is saying things which are not true. Either of ignorance or self-interest, etcetera, so people will be very reflective on whom they trust. So, to that extent, businesses and brands are bringing theirs – how do they then become the custodians for this guidance, the consumers will be an important thing?
Lenny Murphy: Yes, interesting. So, we’ve gone longer than I thought we would, but that is not a bad thing because this has been fantastic. I would like to give everybody a chance for final thoughts. Why don’t we end where we began? Elizabeth, final thoughts that you’d like to share?
Elizabeth Morgan: Yes. Thanks, Lenny. I mean I think that it all comes down to bringing the richness of the insights assets together with the new and equipping insights managers to make changes to a bigger picture to guide the business, so that’s really what we’re focusing on doing. I think also, just to the points that the panelists had been making about collaboration and tools, very important to understand the conversations that are driven by insights that are happening everywhere. So, our company particularly is focusing on making sure we can inject insights into a collaborative environment so that they stay at the table no matter where those remote conversations and site conversations are occurring.
Lenny Murphy: That’s great. Hunter, final thoughts?
Hunter Thurman: Yes, absolutely. I mean, all this weirdness, all this craziness or whatever, we all referred to it as essentially, it’s a suspension of control. From a psych perspective, human beings create one thing above all else, control, which is always a perception of control. Where everybody is really upended is we don’t feel like we have any. So, I guess my comment to the industry is we do. There are predictable components. It is more measurable and predictable than we’re all thinking right now by triangulating our data, by using the metrics that we have and using some more progressive ones, there are ways – there are measures like resiliency, things that the military uses to study effects of stress on people. There are measures from the world of academia that apply here and actually give us a fairly controlled even for what’s likely to come next and as we’ve talked about the role of this industry, we’re the ones primed to do it. So, those opportunities were there and we have more control than we think we do.
Lenny Murphy: That’s great. Michael, parting thoughts?
Michael Winnick: Yes, I think that all of those are true points. I just want to add, I think that this is a time not just when people are available to kind of tell their experiences, but to a degree at the time when people need to share their experiences and their stories and I think that we do have I think in addition to our jobs to understand markets and shift the markets and demand. I think we have the opportunity and the responsibility to bear with it and to help people kind of share collectively the experience that they’re going through and learn from them. So, I think this is a super important time to not be just market researchers or user researchers but to really be human researchers and to tell and share kind of the human experience that we’re all going through.
Lenny Murphy: Fantastic point. You mentioned, Hunter, feeling in control, I’m a control freak. Since there are so many things that I feel like are out of my control, only I can control is myself and focus on helping. That’s what this is. This roundtable is my attempt to try and help. It’s the only way that it helps me feel sane through all of this. So, great point. Pradeep, won’t you wrap us up? Your final thoughts.
BV Pradeep: Yes. Final thoughts are basically, of all the industries which would be smiling away is the insight industry because we live on and thrive on changes in consumers’ markets because there’s an insight there with everything’s going on. This is a tsunami of change and behaviors are changing, attributes changing, minds are just changing, and everything is changing. So, we should be thriving in this to say, we will provide you with the guidance and the perspectives of what’s emerging, what’s staying, what’s sticking, what’s completely changing, etcetera. We should have a smile on our face if we don’t.