VectorScient Takes on MRMW 2017 – Networking Reception & Day One Highlights
Originally published on LinkedIn · May 03, 2017
VectorScient spent much of last week at MRMW, a premier Market Research conference highlighted by several compelling speakers and presentations. The VectorScient team presented within the “Innovation Elevator” portion of the conference, where we were given the opportunity to showcase our product to many potential partners and customers.
The week began on April 24th at a pre-conference networking event hosted by Grubhub. There, the Grubhub team presented their business model and introduced Slice, the in-house restaurant that doubles as a test lab and training ground. Slice serves Grubhub employees, functioning at first glance like any other restaurant. But Slice is always changing. The restaurant alters its setting and style constantly, embracing fine-dining one week and casual takeout the next. Intentional or not, Slice reinforced a key lesson for our team: successful businesses are constantly adapting.
MRMW officially began the next morning (April 25th), and we couldn’t have been happier with the event (shout out to event Chairman Dan Foreman and Baileigh Allen, who did a great job managing it all!). The conference and proceedings were perfectly suited for the crowd, absent of the ginormous booths that tower above many events and steal the attention. Instead, the schedule gave everybody the opportunity to demo their product, engage in meaningful conversation and receive helpful and actionable feedback. Needless to say, the VectorScient team walked away both impressed and enlightened, armed with a better understanding of the challenges faced by the market research industry. Our machine learning and predictive analytics capabilities lead to better surveys, and MRMW helped us realize how we can better articulate and position our product as a difference maker.
Throughout the conference, two core themes emerged. The first of these was video-based market research. The concept is simple: capturing consumer feedback via video can help uncover emotions, behaviors, motivations and feedback traditional surveys just can’t measure. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Although videos are effortless and fun to watch and record, they’re difficult to process. The first roadblock is the need for transcription, followed by the difficulty of measuring nuance and the challenge of translating feedback into actionable insights. Some products leverage machine learning for the heavy lifting, but there’s still a ways to go. You can check out some interesting discussions on this topic here , here and here.
The second major theme explored the use of social media to conduct surveys. Today, brands are recruiting willing participants via WhatsApp to observe their interactions and capture feedback – one of several methods being used to augment traditional question & answer surveys. Borderless Access and Johnson and Johnson presented a fascinating case study discussing how they conducted WhatsApp based surveys.
Of course, these weren’t the only standouts. A few presentations stood out in terms of impact and utility, including Om Marwah’s presentation on rapid prototyping and testing. Doug Hall’s presentation on the use of emotion in consumer segmentation data was also one to remember – the wildly funny and engaging presentation was as entertaining as it was informative.
Day One concluded with an awards ceremony, where several richly-deserving companies and individuals were awarded for their body of work. We wrapped Day One on a high note, ready to tackle Day Two.
Contributions and authors: Authored by Suresh Chaganti, Co-Founder & Strategy advisor at VectorScient. Thank you for reading the post. Previous VectorScient blog posts and "Does MailChimp really know your customer?"
