We recently attended Greenbook’s new online version of IIEX North America, that was postponed from its usual spring time slot and reimagined in a virtual setting— as we are still unable to meet in person in the usual venue of Austin, Texas, due to the pandemic. Our attendees picked sessions that were the most interesting to them, reported back to the wider team on our learnings, and we share them here with you!
Our Learnings
Our Chief Research Officer, Greg Stucky, dropped in on “Becoming Behavioral Designers: The Journey to Make Behavioral Research Pervasive” with Carlos Navarro (Principal Financial) and Will Leach (Mindstate Group). Session attendees heard about focusing marketing communications on behavioral motivators to gain clear results—something we are big fans of doing here at InsightsNow as well. This talk touched on mental mind states, showcased how to go beyond personalities to understanding decision-making, and discussed communication strategies for target audiences. We have found the areas they covered to be true in our own innovation research—you must go beyond merely “correct” marketing messaging, but also ensure the product or service delivers on the promise of the message. This allows the offering, the messaging and the experience to be in complete harmony. Greg also popped into some planned networking sessions, including trivia night with Women in Research (WIRe). InsightsNow recently became a corporate donor supporting the WIRe organization, and we had a fun night answering trivia questions about famous women making history.
Kristen Dale, InsightsNow’s Vice President of Client Partnerships, joined the Renee Smith (Gutcheck) session on a “Modern Look at Personality & Consumer Behavior” to take a deep dive into some interesting work within neuroscience. Some techniques discussed included ways to unlock subconscious mindsets and core personas to create effective product engagement and communication, with presentation points on personality measures, eye tracking, language-based assessments and more. Kristin also went to a “The Future of Insights” session with Phil Ahad (Toluna) and Michael Lancor (Procter & Gamble) where they discussed ways they’ve been helping P&G in their quest for constructive disruption. Research approaches for the brand to stay ahead of the fast-changing market included quick learning techniques, and also what might be a stop gap in the product space. Both her session choices resonated with the consumer behavior and disruptive research that InsightsNow has been focused on for our research studies.
Our business development and membership services associate, Amissa Sugden, decided on “Storytelling with Data” with Jason Alleger (Traeger Grills) for one of her IIEX NA sessions. He started out by comparing the story structure of “The Three Little Pigs” to data storytelling, noting that the fairy tale has an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. The problem with presenting data is many data stories don’t bring people along a journey like this. During the talk, attendees learned about storytelling templates, graphs and creating focus, the words we use to describe data, and some great examples for inspiration. Applying some of his tips is sure to make any data presentation anything but dry, and we were glad for Amissa to bring back these tips to the team!
Sarah Kirkmeyer, who is a senior director of client partnerships at InsightsNow, went to “A Winning First Impression: How to Create Appealing Product Designs by Leveraging Implicit Research” with Quantilope where they showed a platform for pulling in and displaying implicit results. She also popped into “Spiritual Design: Making Room for Meaning” with Dr. Stephen Wendel (Morningstar) where attendees learned about intentionally designing one’s environment (physical, social, temporal) to remove distractions and make room for a meaningful spiritual life.
We gained a wide array of knowledge from the presentations at this year’s IIEX NA, and enjoyed seeing some colleagues, researchers, friends and clients online – and can’t wait to meet up with everyone in person soon.
