Guy White, Catalyx Founder
Question #1: Without giving too much away – what is the core message of your talk and what would you like delegates to remember?
• For the last few years people have been confusing crowdsourcing and communities. And the former is a far more versatile tool than the latter.
• The ability to activate an appropriate Crowd and target individuals within it when appropriate is a very powerful approach to insight discovery.
• The talk will introduce how Crowdsourcing in Market Research has changed and how perceptions and understanding should change….
• And by doing so how the consumer can be brought into the conversation and decision making process in a far more integrated way right from Insight Discovery to Commercial Optmisation.
Question #2: Why did you choose the topic of your talk?
• I’ve been interesting in Crowdsourcing and its power for Marketing and Consumer Centric growth problems since 2010, when I stumbled upon the Wisdom of Crowds and various other related pieces of literature.
• As a marketer (as opposed to a pure researcher) I have always been looking for better ways to embed the consumer in the creative development process. (I find it mad that in virtually all companies the marketing budget and research budget sit in very different places).
• The ability to activate Crowds and embed the into is a very powerful way of solving this problem
• Yet Crowds are misunderstood. Its much easier to think of communities (which are different). (since the Power of the CROWD often comes in the analytics rather than the input)
• And the rise of DIY has only exasperated this problem.
• So it feels like a good time to try to move this conversation forward.
Question #3: What motivates you to join QUAL360 Europe and what are your expectations?
• MRMW conference is my favourite on the circuit. Qual 360 is organized by the same people. So Im hoping it has the same feel.
• Meet great people. Mix well with both agencies and clients. Have provocative conversations. Hopefully show off a little about Catalyx and how our approaches to consumer activation and crowdsourcing can be a game changing way of activating insight in consumer centric organisation
Question #4: There is a lot of talk about the current state of qualitative research – how would you sum up the current state of qualitative research and potential future challenges? And what do you think QUAL360 Europe as a conference can contribute?
• At a cross roads between technology and people…. And getting messier with the rise of pure DIY and the proliferation of self serve platforms that don’t protect the power of insight.
• Its easy to process numbers and get to a good conclusions. Its far more complex (but ultimately I would argue far more rewarding) to effectively process unstructured text, video, imagery, emotion, behaviour… Yet you need experts with time and tools to do this. (and in a zero based budgeting world where the allure of pure play DIY can be difficult to ignore, its can be hard to make a case for this…. Because it is easier to talk about COST than to talk about VALUE.
• QUAL360 (and other conferences and industry bodies) can contribute by being a voice for this. By ensuring those that talk champion these points. By making sure that the power of insight shines through and by lobbying those that stand for Insight and how it can unlock organizational growth have a seat at the top tables of companies.