This week, Eric talks to Attest CEO and Co-Founder, Jeremy King, about how data leads to better, smarter business decisions with no guesswork. He believes that by having the right data business leaders and marketers are able to know precisely when certain risks are justified and when they’re not. They are able to understand their target audience, not just their current customer base.
Coming from a background in both science (as an undergraduate) and business (at Harvard Business School, no less), Jeremy approaches business problems in novel ways, recalling cases from both business school and the natural world to gain new perspectives on seemingly unsolvable issues. Rather than operate on intuition and our unspoken but ever-present biases, Jeremy insists that businesses should operate like scientists in a world where data is king and bias is a crime. This conversation will undoubtedly inspire you to see the ways in which data can help you make better decisions.
To get in touch with Jeremy, find him on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremykingjk/
And to learn more about Reach 2 Academy Trust, visit https://www.reach2.org/
To listen to this conversation on your preferred streaming platform, click here.
Transcript:
Jeremy: If that's all you're doing, those two simple steps learn about the biases that you are inherently bringing into your own decision making. And second, put consumers in that decision making process more often, you will be right more often guaranteed.
Eric: I'm Eric Fulwiler and this is Scratch Bringing You Marketing lessons from the leading brands and brains rewriting the rule book from scratch for the world of today.
Everyone, My guest today is Jeremy king, CEO and founder of attest who, as you know, is our research partner here at rival. So Jeremy was originally trained as a scientist with a focus on genetics, ecology and animal behaviour. And it's fascinating to hear how that has influenced his perspective and approach to the world of markeƒatting, and actually even influenced why and how he started attest to begin with. Jeremy went to business school in the States, he was part of the MIT entrepreneurial lab in my hometown of Boston, he was at McKinsey for nine years before launching attest in 2015. We talk about as you can imagine, what it means to be data driven versus idea led, and actually how it's important to have a balance of the two, Jeremy talks about what he's seeing in the space of consumer research, and also, what brands are doing to become best in class at consumer research and being data driven. And we also talk about how to create a culture of being open, interested and curious around data. So as a really good conversation with Jeremy, we touched on a bunch of different things. And just fascinating to kind of hear his scientist, mind and perspective on all this stuff. So I really hope you enjoy the conversation, please do. Let me know what you think. And without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Jeremy King.
Hey, Jeremy, how you doing today?
JeremyL Very well, you?
Eric: I am doing really well, I'm very much looking forward to this interview. Both because as of course, you know, we have been using attest for our own primary consumer research for a lot of the content that we're doing. And then, depending on when this episode goes out, it probably won't be live. But people will have heard of the intelligence and advisory platform that we're building. So we are user and a fan of the product. And then also, in doing our prep for this interview, you have a really interesting background that I'm excited to get into some of the things you studied at school, I know you came up through the management consulting ranks at McKinsey. And then of course, launched attest seven years ago now coming up on seven years.
Amazing. So we're going to hear all about that. And then of course, a topic that I'm very passionate about is data driven growth and everything that goes into that. So I'm sure that we won't have time to get to everything. Let's dig in. So let's start with the question that we're asking all of our guests. What is a brand that you're obsessed with right now and why?
Jeremy: Obsession for me works both ways. So there's a few brands I'm obsessed with personally, but I'm also obsessed with the ones that do things that are unexpected or where something unusual happens. So right now I've been obsessed with BrewDog and meta aka The artist formerly known as Facebook. The peloton just seems to continuously make a series of mistakes. If we think back to two years ago, they were at the top of their game they were the icons of brands to be obsessed over and they launched some campaigns that people thought were sexist that was incredibly easy to avoid they put their primary product on sale you'll notice that most other premium brands don't do that to Porsche have never had a sale peloton did BrewDog in all sorts of massive their own creation. And they built this amazing brand that drove you to say the entire craft beer movement, certainly in the UK. And they're in the middle of doing a whole bunch of other stuff around that. Allegedly we're meant to say on top of that, and meta running a rebrand of one of the most valuable companies in the world and just last week wiping the GDP of Estonia out of Mark Zuckerberg's pocket book. So I'm obsessed with a bunch of brands, many of whom are test clients. But where I think it's really interesting is where we see these inflammatory mistakes, massive volatility, big bad moves that blow up or blow up badly. And those are the ones that I think we learned the most fun from positively and negatively and those the ones that for me, most fun and therefore most obsessive.
Eric: So what do you think it is with those? I mean, I think the meta conversation to me fits in a slightly different bucket, because I think soccer berg is you know, essentially is playing chess and doesn't care about the checkers moves of, you know, the market cap and how people feel about the brand like he's playing for 10 years from now, not 10 months from now, but when it comes As to the BrewDog peloton. And some of these companies that are just making mistakes like the Pepsi Kylie Jenner, Jenner commercial is another one, there's so many that they just like to put their foot in it. I mean, is it as simple as there's just not enough testing and not enough data to go with? Often the opposite of data driven is idea led, and I want to talk more about that. But sometimes, it's just like a person who makes a subjective decision. So I guess it's their idea. But it's amazing. You know, for me, having spent so long in the advertising agency world, you think there's very robust, complicated systems around this stuff? And sometimes it's just like somebody saying, Oh, I like that idea. What's wrong with that? So is it as simple as like, they just need more data and how they make their decisions? Or is it more than that?
Jeremy: We'd like to use the phrase to inform every intuition to dissolve any doubt. Because we believe that great businesses, great brands have all sorts of great ideas that just need information to choose between them to dissolve doubt, you know, figure out how bold to be, should we or should we not launch it? I think about that peloton, ad and I'll bring it to life a bit. So this was an ad that showed a lot of let's, let's just say the real words, it showed a lot of assets or acids. And a lot of people really didn't like that it was labeled as sexist and dystopian, and, you know, 10 plus years out of date. What we do know is if the people in that peloton and I say this with great respect, because they built an amazing brand and product set, if they just asked 10 people outside their own office, what they thought about that ad, they probably wouldn't have launched it. But yet somehow it slipped through the cracks. And those cracks are therefore very, very wide and don't have a lot of data involved. If they just walked around the block and asked 10 people, what do you think about this, they would have known what they found out after spending millions of dollars on it and wiping billions off their market cap by making this terrible error. And then they did it again. They didn't update their pipeline of activities, and they got hit twice. So whatever is going on there, it probably is more intuition led than data lead. I think alchemy and correctness comes when you combine the two.
Eric: Yeah, I totally agree. quick sidebar question that just popped to mind. Does your marketing team use attest? Or maybe a broader question is, how do you bring? How do you remove the guesswork from your own growth? Because I think it's, you know, sometimes there's a situation of the cobblers children has no shoes, where, you know, ad agencies are actually really bad at their own marketing. So I'm just curious, how do you walk the walk internally, with all the things that you talk about externally?
Jeremy: We'd like to call that you've got it you're cooking, or sometimes we call it? Yeah. So externally, I split it into external, internal, external, we publish quite a lot of stuff that we produce using our own product, we do it a because we can. It's interesting, we can produce datasets about DTC industry in the US, we could do that every day. If we wanted to every hour, we could do that at a state level at the city level, at individual age and gender combinations.
Basically, anything you think is possible we can produce it. So we we'd like producing it, because it's fun to talk about. It also creates, you know, let's be frank, it creates really nice inbound leads, which are, hey, I read this thing. It's super interesting. But I'm trying to apply this to launching my American company in 15. European markets, how the hell do I launch in Germany, and what do they even want. So it helps us show what we can do and use our own product. But it brings back really great business conversations, internally, probably two main themes here. So internally, we do a huge amount of UX research. Deep down at attest, what we're trying to do is take this demand that's always existed, this demand to know more about your target customers to therefore do more research, have more data to have more input information for intuition, and the ability to be bolder and dissolved out. So everyone wants this. Our key is to make it simple and easy. But yet, every user and customer wants it to be customised to their problem. And to specific to their biggest pain point, which is also a constantly moving target and every b2c business. So our UX research is all about what problems do you have? How does that change? How would you want to solve that problem, and then it's on us to build technically, the hard thing, which is somehow making that powerful thing very simple. And that's how we tried to build it philosophically. Then internally, when we make decisions and choices, we try to use data to do it. So just this week, we were talking about things in our offices, and we'd like to add information to our own intuition and and use all information that we can about disposal so I think all across the board we we use our own philosophy but we do it with our customers and users in light.
Eric: Well, I'm sure that you're kind of slogan on inform intuition and dissolve that out came out of market research because you found the insight that we marketers love alliterations on there.
So Jeremy, what are you most curious about in your professional world right now?
Jeremy: Would you want the during the pro answer or the weird answer?
Eric: Definitely the weird answer always.
Jeremy: So I love. So I'm originally a scientist. And I also was lucky to study at business school in the US. So I love using from science, the Academy of things that are known and understood and applying them to new problems. And I love from business school, the case method, using past experiences and more, more to prompt you to think about things from different perspectives. More than case studies and histories has every version of the answer of the thing you're looking at right now. So a thing that I really enjoy doing is, when I'm stuck with a problem, I think about one of 50 different animals or effects from nature that I've studied, and how nature has solved the problem that I've got in front of me, five to 10 different ways before and what we need to be is more like a seed that can only germinate after it's been burnt, which is why various plants when in forest after forest fires, forest fires, after three days, the forest is covered in green, things that are waiting for the opportunity. I think about the case method. I think I spent a lot of time where do you think about Benihana is one of my favourite cases from for Business School has the concepts of buffering price elasticity optimising for your critical path, that asset utilisation has all of these clever things built into it too. So cases like Benihana Toyota, the genesis of the Gameboy Genesis are the wrong word for that, wasn't it last Nintendo? Whenever a problem comes up, I think about cases from business in cases from the natural world and how all these things can be solved. But you gain immediate a bunch of different perspective, then you can choose the best combination.
Eric: I don't think that's weird at all. And actually, it relates to something I'm very passionate about. And I talk about whenever somebody gives me a chance, but it doesn't always come up that often. Which is I find it so fascinating that we all have different dimensions to our lives. And those could be current dimensions. Like for me, family work, and working out, those are kind of like my three dimensions. But it could be also dimensions over time, what you studied in school, what you did, at one point what you're doing now, and we tend to box, our perspectives and learnings up into those dimensions. So for example, how you build routine, going to the gym, or how you get stronger at a certain lift, you think about in that context, but you don't apply that to work or family. And oftentimes, getting smarter or getting better at anything is the same way that you could get smarter and get better at anything else. And so I think it's really interesting, I haven't found the right way to, I guess really? I don't know, define it in a simple and clear way. But there's something in there that I think you're talking about as well as like, I guess his perspective. It's curiosity. And perspective is like looking sometimes it takes thinking outside the box to solve a problem inside the box. That's a wait too cliche way to sum it up. That's not really what I'm saying. But I think I think you're picking up where I'm at. I think it's a really interesting thing to talk about.
Jaramy: Yeah, completely. I, I sort of landed on this same thing. It was staring me right in the face early on in my McKinsey career. So I was working on a financial marketplaces, sort of electronic trading and movement of vast amounts of capital and resources and Hunter algorithms that seek out other people who are trying to do electronic trading, work out how they're trying to execute it and praise against them using their own rules. That was, you know, quite new back then. But all of it had we've seen it before in in how ecosystems work, eco ecological niches change their selective pressures on who wins and who loses, they're constantly in motion. Biochemistry tells us how we move atoms and chemicals across cream concentration gradients. So you can take all these principles and basically use these things to figure out how to break the rules and break the physics of any problem that you're looking at. Early on in my career was on things like electronic trading, hedge funds, and how all of that fits together and how it should work. And if you can do it, right, you can see the future, which is, you know, with varying degrees of resolution, but by understanding the philosophy about how things evolve, and why things are the way they are and where they're probably going, you can start to see the various directions and it's putting together many different perspectives and ideas and principles from as much diversity of background you can draw on. I think that's always the key to finding a better answer than you might naturally land on first time with student tuition alone.
Eric: Yep, yep. I love it. So Jeremy, talk to us about your kind of day in the life as founder, CEO of a TAS, what does that look like?
Jeremy: Now, I constantly struggle to balance this and that there. As with probably most founder CEOs, there's no typical day in the life. So things I tried to do more of that I that I'm failing at. So I tried to speak with customers often. So inspired by people like Nick meta at Gain sight. He famously speaks to 20 customers a week, I'm not sure if he does anything else.That's amazing trying to do more of that. I tried to fill in the gaps in my knowledge, but I'm also learning to try to play to my strengths more. So I like to get involved in things like fundraising, things like hiring, we're always growing our business. And that's a big part of my mix right now. We're growing in many different places. So I travel quite a lot and make it my business to try to offer to support and help people I really believe in the philosophy of hire smart people in get that out of the way. So just trying to do that quite a lot to mostly getting out of the way, but more offering to empower, applaud, support, invest, and then get out of the way. I also spend a lot of time working on charities. So education's really important to me. And I work with a charitable organisation that helps improve primary schools across the UK. So elementary schools for Americans, all across the UK, and we help the most challenged schools become at least good or outstanding or great over time. So those are my main mix of things. I also have a three and a half year old daughter, which is quite fun. So when I'm not doing those first two, I'm pretending to be a robot in a swimming pool, with a big floating island with a three and a half year old, saying go faster robot. It's a fun combo.
Eric: Sounds like it, What's the name of the charity, because we'll include it in the show notes just to give them at least a little bit of a shout out.
Jeremy: It's called reach to Academy trust,
Eric: Reach to Academy trust. Great. Well check that out. Let's continue to talk about your background, because I think it's, you know, with what we talked about, and you having different perspectives on things that's clearly contributed to where you are now with the task. So the question that I have is what matters most to getting you to where you are, but I think you can either answer that, or I think the thing that would be interesting is, you know, you studied genetics, ecology, animal behavior. You went to business school, I like how you said, you went to the US you didn't even say you went to school in Boston. But I know you went to Harvard. You were at MIT and entrepreneur labs, you've done it and then you were at McKinsey for a while. How did you land on the perspective or the insight, the idea to start a task, maybe we could dig into that story? I think that would be really interesting.
Jeremy: It comes from those two places plus a secret third. So one, I think, as you train as a scientist, these ideas are drilled into you and you believe that they are right around empiricism, the scientific method, it is your obligation to follow hypotheses and either prove or disprove them, it is your obligation to contribute to the academy and to peer review other people's things. And if you can find ways to put together different bits of theory and then prove that they are connected, that's the kind of the ultimate Yokozuna, champion version of being a scientist. So the idea that, and I'll take it back to the old school, I would sit around playing with fruit flies in a lab trying to discover things that other people haven't discovered before. Some of my research was about how BB reef fish grow up, and that was previously not understood well at all. By building computer models and understanding the difference between different coral reefs, I proved that it was all to do with sound, different fish develop the ability to hear at different times, they develop the ability to swim at different times, different fish have the innate ability to know which sounds of reefs, the best ones for them to grow up in, where they have the most ability to succeed. And they swim towards those reefs in a non random way. So reef sound drives everything. And that's what causes fish to just turn up. And you can discover these amazing things. It's all there kind of for the taking. And so I loved the following ideas, testing, learning, constantly exploring and maybe find something, maybe find nothing. But that's all progress. Maybe you recognise parts of marketing in this already. But one, part one, that's how I think the world should work, more businesses should work that way, and more people and businesses should work that way. In particularly in b2c, we have quite light versions of this. We have don't, you know, think about bias, be conscious that bias in science, bias is not only wrong, it's basically illegal. You get thrown in scientists prison, and they throw away the key.Second, working at McKinsey, I got to work in over 25 different countries, always very high pressure things that had to, you know, big new things that we were building or things that are going terribly wrong where the client or the board or the CEO can't figure out what to do and They bring in a bunch of children with laptops. And somehow that's going to be the solution.
What I saw across all these different things, every there was some commonality every time. Every business had lots of data about their operations, their supply chain, their financial reporting, their payroll, all sorts of internal data, great, love it, ERP stuff. They also had really, you know, in some cases, bad in some cases, good, but in general, improving understanding of their existing customer base, CX, NPS, user feedback, qualitative research with focus groups, even web journey optimization tools, like intercom, they let you understand what people are saying about you, and how to triage their feedback and sentiment better. Something was missing, though, which was always understanding the customers you don't have yet the ones that you wish you knew that's the most valuable thing. But yet no one could do that. Well, the answer to that was always, either I'll I'll exaggerate for effect by a Gartner report or commission or market research project, both of which are really good answers. The thing is the first one, the Gartner report, everyone can buy that for $99 plus tax. Market research projects also really great answer. I love market research projects. But somewhere in the middle, there's 1000s and 1000s of things that we wish we knew that never make it into those two processes.
And one of my first things at McKinsey was working in South America trying to launch a European financial services company into a whole bunch of different South American markets. I had no idea how Peruvians are different from the Libyans, I don't know what makes Brazilians want to change their pension planning. I don't know why Argentinians would or would not trust a European financial services company. But yet, I had to know all these things in two weeks. So attest is sort of inspired by this ubiquitous business problem, we will always wish we knew about our target customers. And that would be incredibly valuable, if only we could. So attest to be tried to make that easy.
Third is a bit simpler. It's a huge market size $80 billion dollar market for market research. So you know, larger than video games larger than hamburgers, larger than a whole bunch of exciting things. It's also quite boring. Like most of the best b2b SaaS companies come out of quite boring industries.
CRM is fundamentally quite boring market researchers, you know, unless you make it interesting, it's quite boring.
And that entire $80 billion market really only amplify applies to professional researchers, people who really know what they're doing, doing projects that are very carefully designed and curated, because it's quite a big, expensive and time consuming activity. And if only we could make it simpler and more powerful and more accessible for more people and more businesses, people should do more research more often to know more things constantly. And that's what we're doing. So let me put those three things together. One, it's the thing that I care about that, you know, is being more like a scientist, and I think that should be applied to all businesses to seems to exist everywhere. Everyone wishes they could get this stuff, they just can't get it. And three, if we could pull it off with a SaaS business model. It's actually a really cool and an interesting adventure and exciting thing to do. And that was the genesis of attest.
Eric: And I think, to what you were saying about what were the options previously, or what are the default options that people maybe still go to now, the Gartner research or the custom, you know, commission piece, I think one of the biggest things that I see is, especially in the world of today, the businesses that are growing quickly, over the long term, have the ability to constantly learn and adapt, not just know the right thing at any given time. So even if the Gartner survey was something you could only get, or the commission survey could tell you exactly what your future customers are looking for. That's, you know, one moment in time, and the world is changing so quickly. So you need to figure out both with the tools that you put around your team. But I think also with the talent and the culture that you build internally. Evolution is more important than speed or strength at any given time. And so I think that's a big piece of it for me, and we push a lot on, you know, this dynamic and this balance really, of being data driven and idea led, because it's not just about the data. And I also don't think that there is a right balance for everybody. And I actually be curious to get your thoughts on this. Because I think that you share your strategy needs to fit the culture of the business that you are. So if you're a team of scientists, it might be tough to be a business that is led whose growth is led only by ideas and creativity, but you probably need to bring a little bit more in to that mix. And then the opposite is also true. So I think as CMOS or heads of marketing or anyone that's kind of responsible for more than just themselves. Thinking of that balance between being data driven and idea led, you need both and you need the culture and the talent and then also the technology in today's day and age because there's so much more opportunity with the new stuff that's out there to give you both of those assets.
Jaramy: Yeah, and there's, there's also an inherent unfairness out there as well. So I'll pick it to extremes for effect. So we have big companies that use our product, they have all the data in the world. And we walk in there and have a conversation with him about what is the test and they say, we have all the data in the world, we, you know, we have 40% market share in some of our categories, we in some markets, we are over 70% of the market, we buy every data source there is what could you possibly have that we don't already have? We're like, oh, so anything that you don't know, what don't you know about something that would really change, you know, the destiny of your most important decisions in the next couple of weeks. And they're like, oh, there's hundreds of things we don't know. We're like, okay, there you go. That's, that's what attest is for whatever that thing is.
And they are constantly trying to act like smaller attackers how to measure short term trends, how to be bold, in branding, how to take risk, but where it's justified, how to move fast and be agile, that's what our product is to them. For the small people they're looking up at, you know, if you're trying to enter the men's shaping category, you are competing against some really big players, you don't have all the data they've got, you will never probably have their branding, clouds nor history, you can't get Neymar or David Beckham as your you know, product go to market partner, but you can do is move really quickly. And those small companies don't have data science or insights are research teams, they don't have 40% market share, and therefore, you know, data that represents the entire category, what they do have the ability to take huge risks, and to be bold, and all the opposite of the other things. So both of those groups use our product, but for very, very different reasons. And it's it's actually quite exciting for us when we see that there are ways that you can accelerate your business in either direction constantly, and that knowing target customers better than anyone else is always the answer. So we we like to think about that bit as making competition, market dynamics, product innovation, marketing, more fat, because it's driven more around the customers and therefore hopefully lower waste as well. And both of those things are in my minds. Very exciting.
Eric: So when you look at the businesses that are using attest, are there any similarities or red threads, you can draw any patterns you see in who's using it? Well, and that can that can either be like, you know, how they're thinking about doing their customer research? Or it could be the types of questions that they're asking themselves the way that they've set up their team, how they prioritise this within their marketing strategy. So it can either be specific or general. But I'm curious, any kind of best in class trends that you see?
Jeremy: Yeah, there's, there's definitely a best in class that I can see. And it's you already touched on it earlier, it's kind of the balance between what you know, and what's changing versus the moves you're trying to pull off and how to make them better. So the best users we see to test are the ones where they have this continuous measurement ones where they've got thread a continuous understanding, and what they're looking for tends to be things like a change in our competitive dynamic, a new competitor has emerged in x, y z market, or there's a new buying factor sustainability used to be the seventh most important thing, now it's in the top four, maybe look out two quarters, that's going to be number two, or number one. So if we want to be three months behind, rather than three years, sorry, three months ahead, rather than three years behind, we probably need to do something about that right now. Because our product development cycle and our go to market cycle is three months. So like that's a need to act today thing. So what they're doing is over all the markets, they're in all the demographics they care about. They're looking for new trends, new emerging dynamics, new competition, and new opportunities. Sometimes they'll run research in markets that they aren't yet present in so that they can start building up that knowledge base before they get into the market. And they can figure out what they're changing in that market. So these are all very clever and tactical ways of running ongoing research, to know more than others to see things at the point where you need to act immediately so that you're acting ahead of change rather than letting the change happen to you. thread B is those same customers and users also use attest to understand bold and wild moves. So I'll give a real example here. blooming wild, banning red roses on Valentine's Day. It's the number one selling SKU at Valentine's Day in the valley in the UK. Boomer wild This is very topical in early February. Last year they said you know what we think we think we think in our building red roses are a bad idea. People who receive red roses think their last minute lazy choice bought in a gas station overpriced, low care factor. It's better than nothing but it's kind of lazy and sad. People who give red roses in all of blue and Miles return which they published.which they published.which they published.
They kind of admit all of that. Plus they said, Yeah, it is it is lazy. And also I know that red roses are very unsustainable, I know that there's this huge bloom and what red rose production of Valentine's Day and then it's kind of dead the rest of the year. So it's overpriced. It's underrecognized. It's lazy. And you're right, I am lazy. And I actually hate that I get the red roses, I'm actually really sad. They were wild, ran so much research. And they got very specific about exactly where they did this, they bound selling red roses in the UK, that got them a four times year on year increase in Valentine's Day revenue and a 51% increase in share of media attention. So when I say inform every intuition they're like, we just wonder we don't think this is a good idea. They added so much data, they realise it's not. It's not everywhere, specific people in specific markets, specific product lines, dissolve any doubt how far to go? D list the number one selling SKU to pop the top of your revenue growth? That's exciting.
Eric: So deep down, target customers hold the answers to all of this, we just need to find out. And do you see what these teams balloon? While there's some of these other brands that seem to be effective using the platform? Do they have someone that they've hired specifically the kind of specialises in this, like a data scientist or an analyst or researcher? Or are they able to find this insight, uncover this data, even if it's just a marketing manager, or maybe more of a generalist?
Jeremy: We build the product so that anyone can use it. So you need no prior experience of analytics, research insights, you know, data generation, any of that. So we really cheekily, really cheekily, we say, it's so easy. Even a CMO can use it. And when I mean that in the most respectful way, we tell a CMOS, and they're like, Yeah, you're right, but also BP. But thank you as well.
You know, we there's a real interesting cases where we can see a CMO will have a whole bunch of will have their things that they test in attest or have a whole bunch of different teams using attest for various other things. And every now and then we see some leakage between things that are in the CEOs head, and then eventually, they'll, they'll discover some like seam of gold or rubies stuck in the ground, and then they'll release it to one of their teams. And they'll start researching a whole bunch of stuff around that. So CMOs often use attest as like their own private hobbyhorse or testing ground. And then they'll get to the point where they're like, actually, I've really found something here, then they'll suggest to their teams, you might want to research around this, I've just done a few little pilot bits. And it looks like there's something to do here. In reality, they've tested 50 things, this is just the one where it worked. And then the whole org pivots around it. And that's, you know, that's a great job. That's the company really succeeding, you tested all these things you completely bombed out on most of them. But you did find something amazing. And then everyone's suddenly talking about it, and you're researching, you know, what colour to make it? Does it work everywhere? Does it solve our problem about selling more of our product to old people, is our brand perception going to be positive or negative achieved, improved by this, like, all of that. So that's where that's where we get most excited about how clients use our product is when we see this sort of very iterative, continuous testing, big bold, move, unlocking plus this kind of dynamic of everyone talking about data and customers in the way they didn't used to. That's when it's working, because everyone in b2c companies deep down knows that they should know more about target customers. And they haven't in the past, just because it's has been hard.
Eric: Yeah. And I know I keep coming back to this in this conversation. And really, in a lot of the conversations that I have, like the cultural Pete piece is so important, where you just ended that, that, you know, piece of what you said was, you know, people are constantly talking about it. Or I always think of the Peter Drucker quote of culture eats strategy for breakfast. And then one of the things that I say, in the work that we do here at rival is, you know, the people side of what we do matters so much more than the research or the strategy or the training, even. Because the best strategy, the most advanced technology, you know, the most comprehensive tool doesn't matter if you don't have people that are set up, to be able to use it, but are also passionate about why it's important. And so I think that oftentimes, when somebody says culture, it can kind of get brushed aside. But I really think at least for me, for the people listening, you know, thinking about that, obviously, there's the tools, and there's the talent, and how do you actually plug this into the work that you do. But I think thinking, thinking about the culture that you have internally within your marketing team, and how you just nudge that in the direction of people being a little bit more curious and comfortable and open to what data driven means for their role. I think that's such an important takeaway from this conversation, at least for me.
Jeremy: I completely agree in that. There's a I got some really good advice early on in my McKinsey career about you know how to do good strategy consult. And it also applies to this problem. So someone told me really early on, there's two worst nightmare things you can possibly do here. And this was not part of any of our training, onboarding, it was just some great advice that they gave me. One is, you could write the best PowerPoint presentation in the history of mankind. And that could end up in a drawer, and no one will ever read it, you have done your job, in that you produce the report, and the client got what they paid for. But you did not do your job, you did something far worse. That's a massive waste of their time. And yours ends up in a drawer. So yeah, huge success. Wonderful. It's not, it's accepted, no one cares, it's in a drawer. Second, how you get people on board and how you share your work is far more important than what it is. So you may through sheer luck, or your, you know, horsepower, come across the perfect answer in the first week. And then you can either a go and tell everyone about it and dump it on people and walk away in a puff of smoke like a bad magician. Or you could spend five weeks knowing where you're probably going to get to, but getting everyone to sort of discover it with you. And to help everyone kind of get their part of it. Maybe you change it slightly in it changes colour or flavour. Maybe not that much. But how you get to the answer and is, is far more important in how it how it sticks and how it works. So don't end up in a drawer and how you get to the answer is far more important than what the answer is. And both of those really, really stick with me.
Eric: Yeah, I have my similar versions of those that I've learned over my career, and definitely wish I had learned earlier. But the whole, you know, don't be the deck in the drawer is outcomes, not outputs. And so we try to weave that into the work that we do, you know, alliteration, gotta gotta have it in there. The next one does not have alliteration, unfortunately, but maybe I'll rethink it. And that is there's a difference between being right, and being effective. And I, for me, that really works. And I've, you know, of people I've managed, I've tried, because I think, even for me, when I was young, I think I didn't get that point. I was like, Well, I know the answer, like it's this done, you know, or it's your fault, this is the other thing, it's your fault, or it's somebody else's issue. If that doesn't lead to the result that we're looking for, because like I came up with the right thing, I did my piece, but that doesn't matter, especially if you're a manager, especially if you're a leader, you only get judged on the output that you create collectively with the people that are around you. And so while it might seem that you don't want things to work that way, you have to focus on being effective, not just being right.
So that's my take on that. But I totally agree. So Jeremy, we're coming up on time. We've, I think even in that last two, three minute segment, we've already landed on a couple of things that people should do differently after listening to this episode. But what else if you had to sum it up one thing that people listening should do differently. And then in addition to, of course, going over to askattest.com and signing up for a free survey, I'll put the plug in there so that you don't have to, but people have heard it over the last, you know, couple months of this podcast as well. But from everything you've talked about your experience and what you see out there today, what's one thing that people should do differently after listening to you,
Jeremy: A very simple thing it's take the first step to understanding your target customers in new ways. And this takes us down to core strands one is removing bias removing subjectivity, removing projection, removing confirmation bias from your decision making and to is adding more inputs. If only you know, I could wave a magic wand across all b2c businesses, I would get them to understand the very simple core tenets of bias. Don't assume that everyone is like you. Don't assume that you know better than anyone else about your customers. An interesting example there just to bring it to life. We are business school. The way that this was demonstrated to us they ran a really simple survey and obviously you know, I love surveys, run a really simple survey just had two questions. One, what percent 10 of the Harvard Business School student body has an iPhone two, do you have an iPhone? You can guess where this is going. This was 2008. After people, about 25% of people had an iPhone, they thought 60% of the human body had an iPhone. Everyone else didn't have an iPhone, they thought it was about 20% had an iPhone. So nobody was right, everyone was wrong, everyone thinks the opposite of what they have, and that what they have is right and true for everybody. All of that leads us constantly down the wrong path. And none of us are our target customers. Like when you look at ads on TV, let me tell you a secret. None of them are for you. They're all for other people or the mass market. Second is just start thinking about your target customers in a different way. start bringing in new inputs, it doesn't have to be research doesn't have to be simple or complicated, or fancy or new. Just start bringing new inputs, because that will give you a better decision quality every single time. And if that's all you're doing those two simple steps, learn about the biases that you're inherently bringing into your own decision making. And second, put consumers in that decision making process more often, you will be right more often guaranteed how much is up to you, and how fast you can change. But these are two really, really simple things. It is a bit like you know, have less salt, drink less alcohol, don't smoke and eat your greens. But this is how we make healthier decisions in companies. And we are trying to help make that easier is the thing with everything that matters, right?
Eric: The idea is not the hard part. It's the execution. But that's you know, why not? Everybody can do it. Well, by the way.
Jeremy Oh, well. We're working on turning the data into the most delicious Five Guys Burgers, naked milkshake you can imagine.
Eric: As well as being very good for you. salty, fatty data. One of my favourite websites on the internet is the Wikipedia page for cognitive bias. Fascinating read, because you just have no idea how much there actually is I forget, I should go look at it. I haven't looked at it in a while. But it's unbelievable. And just to your point, the awareness of that gives you the perspective to approach things in a much smarter way.
Eric: Jeremy, thank you so much for making the time. This was a fascinating conversation. And thank you for everything you've done at a test. We are certainly benefiting from it here at rival if people want to get in touch Well, they've heard me for a little while now talk about the website and all that but what about you if people want to connect with you directly? To talk more about everything you've discussed today? Where would you want to send them?
Jeremy: I'm on LinkedIn easy to find me Jeremy King Attest. Also first name dot last name at domain very easy Jeremy.King@architect.com.
I love meeting people at events come find me. Always just happy to talk about ideas and trends in all things b2c, or things data. And particularly if you want to talk about that weird intersection between nature and cases from business and challenges. That's where I get most excited. So in particular, always happy to talk about that.
Eric: Well, hopefully you get a take or two on that. Jeremy, thanks so much for joining us. I'll see you soon.
Jeremy Thanks so much. See you again soon.
Eric: Scratch is a production of rival. We are a marketing innovation consultancy that helps businesses develop strategies and capabilities to grow faster. If you want to learn more about us check out we are rivals.com If you want to connect with me, email me at Eric at WWE arrival.com or find me on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, share with anyone you think might enjoy it. And please do leave us a review. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
