Chris Norton: 0:00

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast where we help you learn how to grow your brand by understanding the mistakes and lessons from the world's top marketers. I'm Chris Norton, and today's guest is Robin Smith, head of Corporate at CensusWide, an international market research consultancy based in London. Robin joins us to discuss CensusWide's first voice of the CMO report, which reveals the biggest challenges and opportunities facing modern marketers, from AI-driven creativity to the dangers of brand backlash. Robin helps us unpack the data and looks at the trends shaping the future of marketing and why market research is at the heart of making informed strategic decisions. We dive into why choosing a reputable research partner is essential, the surprising insights around AI's role in marketing and how to balance creativity with hard data to drive impactful campaigns. Whether you're struggling to measure marketing impact or navigating today's fast-paced AI landscape, this episode is full of actionable advice. So, as always, sit back, relax and let's hear how you can leverage robust market research to avoid brand backlash, build creativity and stay ahead in 2025. Enjoy. Welcome to the show, robin Smith. Thanks for joining us.

Robin Smith: 1:19

Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Norton: 1:20

So, robin, why don't you tell us a little bit about you're from Censuswide. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do and how long you've been doing it?

Robin Smith: 1:27

yeah, no problem at all. Uh, so census wide is a 360 market research consultancy. Um, we help agencies and brands with their market research. That's anything from content creation, market research, the sort of thing you'll see in press releases, white papers, all the way through to brand-focused research, brand health, brand testing, and we also do creative testing, message testing. So anything within the research realm really will help with.

Robin Smith: 1:55

I've been there about a decade now, so just under a decade, 10 years I've seen a lot of change. I think I was the sixth member to join in the account management team and that was back in 2050, I think, early 2015. And about five years into that, we spotted a bit of a gap in the market for B2B research. When I first started it was very much kind of red top, who likes brown bread, who likes white bread, national Brit stuff the red top kind of coverage, I think. As a person, I wasn't ever particularly interested in that sort of story, and then this opportunity for B2B research came along and we ran with it. So now I've got a team of 10 within the overall team and we focus on corporate industry. So financial services, professional services, professional services, technology, legal and a smattering of others as well and roughly how much does a piece of research cost?

Chris Norton: 2:49

before we get into the report, like how, if you wanted to do I don't know 20 questions, 500 people. Specific sector you mentioned legal. There we've got a couple of legal clients. So if you, if we had a legal client, we want to do 500 lawyers in the uk, how much would that cost to do that sort of research? Roughly 20 questions, great questions.

Robin Smith: 3:07

thank you, thank you for putting me on the spot as well. It would probably be somewhere between £5,000 and £15,000, and that will be dependent on the type of respondent. You mentioned their lawyers. You know we could be specific as general counsel. Within that we can be just financial services, just large corporates. The number of respondents 500, nice and robust there, definitely. Based off that, we could go all the way down to 100 and you could still get some really good research from that, I would say, and also the length of interview. How many questions do you want to ask them?

Will Ockenden: 3:43

But I think the range I've given you there for one country is probably about right. And, um, I'm quite interested. How do you actually I, I kind of understand the consumer research landscape a bit better. Often that's done via online surveys and things like that, isn't it? Yeah, um, as I understand it, when it comes to a more niche b2b audience, are these people already on your panel or do you kind of actually seek them out and do telephone interviews? How does that work?

Robin Smith: 4:02

yeah, it's, it's a bit of both. Um, they do absolutely exist on a, on a network, already. That's the easiest way to recruit them. Um, the reason they sign up is they get incentivized for their time, but also we give them a protective process. So if they sign up and say I'll answer a survey once a quarter, they know they're not going to be hounded outside of that every week for their opinions. But actually it helps because that means we can send them links, online surveys.

Robin Smith: 4:28

What we'll do is ask them to book in a time to actually answer it. So it's a little bit more structured than just sending it out to, you know, a nap reps I'm nationally representative sample, um, but also we do leverage telephone interviews. So if it's you know, c-suites of large corporates in a single sector, that's quite hard. Um, we'll book in time to talk to them, a bit like we are now. We'll ask the questions as if it is an online survey, um, but the interviewer will input their answers and it's. It proceeds that way. So, um, we also do qualitative research. So we can take that a step further. Imagine you and I right now are having a conversation about bigger themes, not just questions one to ten. But what are your thoughts on digital assets and what's happened in the last week? So a bit more open, the more colourful responses you'll get from that.

Will Ockenden: 5:17

And how senior can you get? I mean, I think a lot of people will be listening to this, thinking, wow, I can get in front of chief execs. Does your panel go right up to that level of seniority?

Robin Smith: 5:27

absolutely does. Yeah, I mean the report we'll dive into with cmos um, 500 cmos in the uk, so, and that's just within marketing um, we are regularly polling c-suite generally cfos quite sought after. But then again, industry specific, we can go CIOs and that's actually chief investment officer. So for financial services, equally, if you take it back to the technology sector, cio is chief information officer. We then have sub sub sections of that CISO, so the people that are information officers but in charge of security. So we can be really, really specific. You know, when we were building out the B2B team, the team I run, the aim was to go after and collect audiences that were sought after but not necessarily easy to access at that point, and so in the last sort of seven years we've really invested an awful lot to build out that capability, both quantitative research and qualitative research as well quantitative research and qualitative research as well.

Chris Norton: 6:27

Okay, so look, can we dive into the voice of the cmo? So that's the reason we've got you on is is we spotted the report and started reading it, and I was like to will. We should definitely get somebody on the show. So you've got yourself on to come and talk about the different themes that are identified. So the report is 500 cmos in the uk. Is that correct? That's correct. Yeah, so 500. 500 cmos in the uk. Is that correct? That's correct. Yeah, so 500 CMOs in the UK. And we've both read it. There's some interesting things that come out. What do you think are the most interesting themes that you found when you did it with CMOs in the UK?

Robin Smith: 6:59

I think the willingness to say how adoption is going with AI. I think it was 99% almost 100% statistically speaking of people said you know, in some form or another, their organization has adopted AI. Now there is obviously some subjectivity to that. They might mean you know, there's a back office worker that puts emails into chat, gbt, but I think actually it's probably not, that. It's probably a bit more formal. It's in their structured workday. So I found that interesting and then, digging into that slightly further, I think about two-thirds of them were sort of enthusiastically open with open arms yeah, 61, 62 yeah indeed, um, yeah, so about three and five.

Robin Smith: 7:41

That other two and five are still hesitant. You know, approaching it with with. You know it's not really about me, but I think that's probably where I'm at as well that cautious, yes, we need to adopt, yes, we need to proceed with, but we need to do so with immense caution.

Chris Norton: 7:58

Yeah, the fact that everybody's embracing technology was fascinating to me, like all CMOs are doing it. It did say that 43% say AI makes their marketing processes more creative, compared with 21% who find it a hindrance 21% who find it a hindrance, I suppose, more creative. There's a big argument over whether using AI is does make you more creative or it, because obviously it takes away a lot of the process stuff. But this is about marketing. It says 43% say AI makes their marketing process more creative. So I suppose process yes, but content no.

Will Ockenden: 8:37

What do you think Will? Well, yeah, that grabbed me that one. And also, is it? 97% have got specific concerns about the use of ai. So while, yeah, while two-thirds are embracing it, a lot are still concerned. I mean, what? What are the concerns that you found in in in this, in the study? Then you know what was it? Specific things people were worried about yeah, absolutely.

Robin Smith: 8:59

I think you're right on the front end and again, there's a bit of subjectivity here but it's making process more creative, as, probably like a starting point, we're going to have a creative session. Here's the client, here's the objective for the campaign leaning on ai to get some form of starting point and then taking that on. Um, it's probably what they mean is what they're referring to in terms of that creativity. But I think that is a danger, right, but one of the biggest dangers was job displacement. So if we're getting a starting point creative from AI, you're kind of taking out a layer of people that do that and are very good at it. And then I think there's a massive fear in you know, two, three, four years that we just have campaigns that are underpinned by AI, or at least started by, and companies in the same sector. Let's take two law firms are just churning out AI-generated campaigns and then all of a sudden, everyone stops listening because they know it's AI-generated. It's just nonsense. Firing off at each other, you lose that human touch, fascinatingly.

Robin Smith: 9:58

The other aspect of AI that marketers are leveraging is the personalization of it is being hyper-targeted, even down to kind of website layouts, but also their content, blogs, but in some sense they'll lose that hyper-personalization if they just start all of their creative with AI and definitely if they get it to write their content for them. So I think that, going back to what we said about proceeding with caution, those are the concerns, this fascinating point at the moment where people haven't fully adopted it in the mainstay in the marketing department. I'd say that's a fair characterization and so they don't really know how to proceed, how to deal with these concerns. And that comes into part of the other bit of the other report said about skills and upskilling people. They're looking for people to come in with some experience of AI is the existing team and definitely CMOs who have been in their careers for 25 plus years, you know, don't really know anything about it, let alone how to leverage it so it's fair to say it's a high priority in right.

Will Ockenden: 11:36

You know is is it. Is it keeping cmos awake at night, or is it just on their list, on their long, long list of uh things to think about?

Robin Smith: 11:43

yeah, I think there's an awful lot keeping cmos awake, and I had to be honest, uh, but this is probably one of them. Yeah, um, I've certainly noticed, even without our own business. Um, there's a directive of you know, we need to leverage AI, but there's not always a direction behind that. So a CMO might be told to leverage AI, but they don't. You know, it's up to them to then go and discover that they're in discovery phase. Then they have to implement it, they need to hire accordingly, and I think that's incredibly difficult to do when you've still got to do your day job and you've still got to hit those kpis and objectives that were set out 12 months ago so it says here as well.

Chris Norton: 12:17

Nearly half, 46 percent of consumers believe it's important to share their values and missions of the brands they buy. Um, but the same proportion 46 percent of consumers worry that brands and values missions are false. That's interesting. So half of consumers just don't believe even brands anymore.

Will Ockenden: 12:37

Well, there's probably some truth in that I mean, you'll tell us Robin but it feels like you know, being a values led organisation feels like the right thing to do in 2024. And while I'm sure a lot of brands are values led for the right reason probably some are paying lip service to the idea of being values led. Is that something you've you've seen and come out in the report, or is that your, your insights?

Robin Smith: 12:59

yeah, yeah, I think that's definitely um fair to suggest. You know it's again. It was kind of an arms race, um to meet that expectation of consumers, to ensure, all of a sudden, that you had to, you know, have some sort of form of esg, otherwise they wouldn't buy. You had to meet any cultural movements and there's an awful lot of opposing cultural movements going on at any one time and so brands are amazingly wary of this. I think 92% of the CMOs said they fear backlash. Now, that's one of their biggest fears and, interestingly, a good proportion of them I think about 40%, two in two in five cmos said it's stifling creativity, you know, but we're not prepared to do. You know the stuff in the 80s and 90s. They're really kind of out there risky advertising, marketing and comms. I'm not saying all of it was successful, I'm not saying all of it was good, but at least there's something in punchy comms. They're actually not willing to take that risk anymore out of fear of backlash. Well, let's again, you know sorry, go on.

Will Ockenden: 13:59

So I was going to say, well, let's dig into that, because that that was one of the findings we found really interesting the fact that there's an awful lot of brands having to deal with backlash, and something like 47, 47 percent had to deal with it, 20 percent are worried about it, and what was quite interesting is, if I've read this correctly, um, b2b brands were more more susceptible to it than b2c brands, which I found quite surprising.

Robin Smith: 14:23

Um, tell us about that there is definitely experience of that um, I can't name names, uh, but some of the research we've done, both quantum and qualitative, big financial services organizations, you know, going back to esg and I apologize because, like ai, it's one of those terms that was, you know, battered away at, and then actually I think we're coming out the other side of that um, but there was a big call for that, definitely an fs and um. The concerns were and these were from customers, but these people were kind of fund managers, you know these professional investors, portfolio builders, um, their concern was that people were just coming out with esg blogs, contents and funds carelessly put together, just to tick that box and move on, and then, you know, hoping that you'd still continue to buy their mining and their weaponry, and you know, those, you know the big, dangerous, nasty ones.

Will Ockenden: 15:12

Tobacco, you know the big dangerous, nasty ones.

Robin Smith: 15:14

Tobacco, you know so, was it a box-ticking exercise? And yeah, so I think they probably do care more, because there's almost an intellectual dishonesty to it. You know you're not fooling me, I know what you're doing with, you know this policy. Whereas in the consumer sphere, perhaps people are a little more forgiving. You know, you definitely see, on social media, you know people jump on. You know this is what a disgusting oversight in this advert or this, this blog post or whatever. Yeah, um, and then the next week they'll buy the product because it's like a household item that they need or something. Um, so I think there's. You know people will flare up more publicly, to be heard more aggressively perhaps, but then actually they're probably more forgiving and things move on quite quickly.

Chris Norton: 15:59

I know there's a lot of backlash on products and people getting cancelled. I've seen just last week Jamie Oliver released a children's book, didn't he? I don't know if he released it, but just recently it's been covered that it was a children's book about a? Um, a little aboriginal girl in australia and then people in australia from that community. And it was never, he's argued. He says he was never meaning to cause any distress or harm or whatever. Um, but it's upset that that community, that much that they've had to the publishers, unpublished the book. So he's essentially had the product that he did it for cancelled, but it which was yeah, it just shows you the power of social media and the an uproar and an upset that that people can have brands and products cancelled he doesn't have much luck, does he?

Will Ockenden: 16:46

jamie oliver? Do you remember a few years ago, he um, he put, he dared to put chorizo into his paella recipe how dare he and he? Basically offended the whole of the basque region and there's this huge kind of like backlash. I mean, actually it was great for him because suddenly his recipe gets uh, you know, goes number one in uh in google search.

Robin Smith: 17:03

But um and then, so interesting I I've forgotten that one, but I think there was also a kind of jerk chicken caribbean recipe yeah, again. Was you know this cultural appropriation call um? He probably just needs to have a stern word with whoever his marketer is actually yeah, I'm sure it's not even.

Will Ockenden: 17:18

I mean he probably doesn't even write these recipes, does he? That's the thing.

Chris Norton: 17:21

That's the thing, yeah he's probably got somebody just who makes them for him.

Will Ockenden: 17:26

Yeah, exactly. So just just before we move on the brand backlash, then, is that brand backlash in the context of ESG, um, or is it brand backlash in general? Or are you saying, you know, esg tends tends to be or, in your view, tends to be the driver of much of this backlash?

Robin Smith: 17:41

yeah. So the ESG point was what I've seen personally and from the kind of B2B world, those B2B marketers. Esg, I think is, is less important for consumers in the consumer world. You know, again, some people will say it's massively important, some people will say it's important but it's not so. That was just an example of something I've seen firsthand with our work. I think brand backlash is with everything, and that's what makes it so difficult for marketers is that it's not backlash from one angle. It's kind of anything you do goes under this, this microscope, under this really critical lens from people from all different backgrounds, all different ages, different demographics, and so to please them all simultaneously is almost impossible I would imagine, and you shouldn't try to, because then you have incredibly beige communications, don't you?

Will Ockenden: 18:35

that doesn't really appeal to anyone. Dull, exactly.

Chris Norton: 18:39

This is interesting. I thought B2B marketing only organizations are more likely 62% to use social listening tools to understand what customers want. So nearly two-thirds are using social listening on CMOs. That's quite interesting for us, isn't it?

Will Ockenden: 18:53

Yeah, that interested me, chris. I think you know we've been pushing social listening and insight for years, haven't we? At Prohibition, probably 5-10 years ago, an awful lot of quite senior marketing people didn't even know what social media listening was, but probably, if you think about our clients, that now most of them, most of them do employ social listening in some capacity, yeah, maybe 10 years ago, I think five years ago, I think most people have.

Chris Norton: 19:17

You know, the market's commoditized itself. It's all merged together. There's a, there's a. There's fewer players, but they're all owned by similar brands and we can name. You could name five off the top of your head. But yeah, I just think it's interesting that b2b is more likely to do social listening than B2C for CMOs out there.

Will Ockenden: 19:36

And does research constitute social listening as well from your perspective?

Robin Smith: 19:40

We wouldn't, I think, if a client came to us with a social listening brief, we'd build a research brief but we'd want to add on using a partner that does it fully to make sure that we hit that objective. To make sure that we hit that objective. But I think, with regards to the B2B world, I think it's indicative of how social media has changed, how people consume, over the last, as you said, five, 10 years, definitely 12 years, right, and we do a lot of these studies. You know persona work, learning, how people digest information. Do they want short form, video, long form, is it? Blog posts, is it?

Robin Smith: 20:14

But also like when they're doing it and you'll notice I'm a commuter now, sort of outside of London, when you're on the train, on the way in, on the way back, even people are emailing but they are listening to podcasts, they are watching videos on LinkedIn. So people are digesting kind of outside office hours and you're not necessarily going to do you know the way you're going to do. That is the social media aspect. It's the easiest to digest and I think people are leveraging it really well In the B2C world. They've been doing it for some time really well. I think the B2B world is kind of catching up and again you've got to keep that careful line of professional but listenable and engaging.

Chris Norton: 20:54

A bit like this podcast. Yeah, the rage r statistics were just out and I saw that the bbc is now, uh, has got 40 of the market share of broadcast and but it said, on average, a uk listener, um, now listens to one podcast a week, which is like everybody is basically listening to podcasts, which is that's. That's definitely changed in the last two or three years.

Will Ockenden: 21:14

Oh, massively, massively since covid in it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, if you think back to, was it 2003 podcasts, and that is when the um ipod came out. Wasn't it around about when the ipod came out? But there's huge interest in the podcast and then it just kind of dropped off a cliff, didn't it for?

Chris Norton: 21:31

years. They were called audio downloads for a while because nobody knew what podcasts were and the BBC had to go legally unbiased. So they called them audio downloads, but nobody knew what they were talking about.

Will Ockenden: 21:42

So actually, I've got a stat from the report which, I must admit, my heart sinks when I read a statistic like this. So 39% of CMOs are having to manage more activity, but with smaller budgets, and that's just kind of depressing to read that. So what else are they being required to do and how are they getting around that? Are they just putting the pressure on their agencies? Are they making their teamwork longer hours? You know what's your view on that. Give us some insight into that statistic.

Robin Smith: 22:12

Definitely. I think we saw part of the report focuses on on the skill gap and how they hire um, and the budget for hiring is also tight. So what they're looking for is this impossible list of experience. Even the kind of entry-level marketers, perhaps new grads that have just come out having done a comms marketing degree they're looking for, you know, creative skills. They're looking for technical skills. They're looking for some experience in market research, the sort of work that we do, um product marketing, content marketing, social media, um, you know all of these things in one package.

Robin Smith: 22:46

You know, I think it still is in a lot of organizations, but they're kind of siloed roles. There should be one person for each of these. If you've got enough budget, you're big enough and you have a big enough team so you can really do all of them justice. But I think increasingly people are having to come into well, build these hybrid roles and then get people to come into these roles. It's great for experience. Obviously, you come out with a plethora of skills, but it must be enormously tough to hire someone that's got all of that experience.

Chris Norton: 23:16

Yeah, cause it did say that the recruiting is a serious concern for CMOs, like recruiting talent, which, for me, talent today, in 2024, 2025 is um, it can be anywhere, can't it? They don't people don't have to be in London city center, they don't have to be uh, you know, in within the m25. They can. They can live in glasgow and work for a london brand or so the talent thing's quite interesting. And then, like you just said there that the number one. It says what are the key skills you're looking for? And 40 said creativity and innovation. So 40 were looking for creative people and 39% AI skills.

Will Ockenden: 23:55

God, that comes out all the time now oh, I mean, ai has got to be the most in demand skill. I mean, we had a quite a few episodes ago. We were talking, I think it was, with Andrew Bruce Smith. We were talking off camera about AI and he was saying if you do an AI degree, you can basically go to Silicon Valley and name your salary, you know, and it's just in such demand and there's so few. But I suppose, from a kind of a, if you do an AI degree, you can basically go to Silicon Valley and name your salary, you know, and it's just in such demand and there's so few. But I suppose, from a kind of a graduate or an entry level career perspective, even a basic grip on AI and its role in marketing is highly desirable, isn't it?

Robin Smith: 24:26

I think so, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Also, I feel that you know you've got a traditional marketing marketing department. There's this new hole to plug and of course you want to hire someone to plug it immediately. It's either that or upskill your existing, then you need to go find courses, reputable courses there's going to be lots of. You know people out there cowboy courses, that sort of thing. So it's probably just easier to try and hire someone with that skillset.

Robin Smith: 24:53

You made a good point about the budget as well. I think, yeah, this year we've noticed that as well, just some repeat projects being either downsized or put off into new year budget. But in terms of hiring, I have noticed a couple of clients a friend of mine as well looking to kind of outsource staff. As you said, talent can be anywhere in the country, can be anywhere in the world as well, and so you know, looking at markets such as South Africa actually, where the time zone is the same or very similar, depending on where you are, the labor costs and salaries generally increase, um are lower um, but the talent is just as good. You know just as um front foot forward learning about ai um.

Chris Norton: 25:37

So I have noticed kind of people looking at those different options as well yeah, we, we get approached for that, for talent recruitment in south africa, because of the cost, the cost benefit and, like you say, the time differences. That's definitely a thing, because I've seen quite a few people have approached us particularly do you want some pr talent in south africa? It's like it's. It's just not something I've ever considered really because, mainly because we focus on the uk well, I think that's a point as well.

Robin Smith: 26:06

you know, if the role is location centric, then that's going to be quite difficult, I guess. I don't know how you bridge that gap, but yeah, it definitely is a thing.

Chris Norton: 26:16

But yeah, if you're doing global campaigns, you definitely consider it, because talent is talent. You want creative, inquisitive people to work for you. That doesn't really matter where they are.

Will Ockenden: 26:28

So, on the budget question, before we move on, have you been doing this CMO report for several years? This is actually the first iteration, right? Okay, because I was going to say I mean it'll be interesting to track that. You know, it becomes quite interesting when you repeat it year on year, isn't it? And you can start to look at these trends because one would hope um, you know, there's more stability in the uk, inflation coming down, consumer spendings on the up.

Chris Norton: 26:52

You'd hope that Taxes going up.

Will Ockenden: 26:53

Yeah, taxes massively going up. Well, on balance, you'd hope those budgets would start to increase, because it's a bit disheartening, isn't it, to see CMO budgets constantly under pressure, because ultimately it gets to the point where you can't do a good enough job, I suppose, as a CMO, if your budgets get cut too much.

Robin Smith: 27:13

Absolutely To your point. Point yeah, this is the the first iteration of what we hope is going to be many we're going to do every year. I think a lot of what we have in here is trackable. Um, no doubt the themes will change slightly over time. You?

Robin Smith: 27:26

know, definitely the lens on it. Yeah, ai's lens next year will be vastly different. Implementation we'd expect to much higher and hopefully we can get a bit deeper with how they've implemented it and the actual impacts and that sort of thing. Um, we're going to do one in the uk, which is this one. We're going to do one in the us as well. Um, so, another market and we're going to we're going to track that over time. We're awfully excited about that.

Robin Smith: 27:47

Um, in terms of budget, just going back to that point, I think this year 2024 has been very difficult. Just going back to that point, I think this year 2024, has been very difficult in that there's been an election in every major economy almost. Just look at the state of the economy as of Tuesday last week, with the new US election with Trump coming back in, obviously we had our election. There's been two global involvement conflicts going on. There's been other conflicts around the world as well. It's been a really tumultuous time and I think definitely large organizations, global conglomerates, have suffered that. You know budgets will get cut when there's times of economic uncertainty. I don't think there's many years more uncertain than 2024, even though really the markets have been relatively positive until now.

Will Ockenden: 28:37

So fascinating insight into the CMO report. We'll get you to give it a plug at the end, so I'm sure those people that haven't heard about it will want to read about it in depth. Slight segue this show is about fuck upsups and um particularly those kind of mistakes um we make in our careers um that we learn from and that's what we're really interested in now. Um, from your perspective, then you know you've got a. You've got a. You've been at census wide sort of 10, 10 plus years. Um, you know, no doubt you've you've had previous roles. Can you think of any kind of personal or professional um mistakes you've made that that have kind of taught you something? Um incredibly important um in your career. Anything you want to you want to talk about, get it off your chest, if you like, cathartic. We've had a few um. We've had a few exclusives on this when people have never yeah, never mentioned it.

Chris Norton: 29:28

Yeah, we had a podcaster came on here and he'd never talked. He had his own podcast, never talked about it. And then he talked about it with us and we just chatted it through and he was like afterwards he messages and said that was the most. I got it off my chest. And then he asked us if he could use the episode. He put it on his own. He used the whole episode on his own podcast, which was quite a cool thing really, wasn't it? So no pressure, yeah, it doesn't have to be anything life-changing, but you know yeah, wow, um.

Robin Smith: 29:55

Yeah, we are constantly making mistakes, right. Um, I think our job is quite process-led, so like they're not the most interesting mistake with big creative campaigns going out, that shouldn't have. I sent the wrong reports to the wrong clients. Yes, the implication there obviously is actually massive because of data privacy and data protection. The learning from that is to just have a better eye to detail.

Will Ockenden: 30:22

Yeah, don't do it again.

Robin Smith: 30:25

Yeah, exactly, don't do it again or you won't have the opportunity to do it again, sort of thing. But I think myself and there's members in my team as well, I know have a lot of different documents we have to do when we're putting a project through, when we're getting the right people assigned to it, that sort of thing. But one of the documents goes to the accounts team, kind of defines what the project is, the expectations, um, the cost of it, but also the cost to us, um, and therefore kind of the, the profit within. That kind of lays out a nice itemized grid, um. And a couple of times that document's gone directly to the client when you should have gone to the accounting team. Yeah, and you know what I think uh, indicative of how busy the people we work with are. It's very rarely been picked up on. Uh, we'll just get back in touch and say just don't worry about that last document, we won't need to pay any attention to that, here's the correct one, could just don't recall the email, because that then draws their attention.

Robin Smith: 31:20

Yeah, yeah doesn't it exactly like you need to keep it very above board? Oh god, you know that's a. That's a relevant, completely irrelevant document. Yeah, it definitely does have all the itemized costs in there for you and your name, so I know that's happened in the past. Yeah, I'll own up to it as well. I've definitely done it.

Chris Norton: 31:38

I think also when you get sent something like that, right, and whoever is listening to this every business out there is out to make a profit from what they do. They want to work with great. We want to work with great clients, we want to do great work. But we also, if we don't make any fucking profit, we're gonna go bust. So we've got to make a profit. So I think if you've got a supplier that's supplying you a service and you've agreed to put you, you've agreed the price. I think it is quite awkward for yourself to get that and then go shit. They're making two grand on that, but or whatever it is. But actually that's that's kind of expected because because of the way you know, it's like when you, when you go into a carpet store right, carpets are predominantly marked up at least 300, 400. So if you knew the price of a carpet, it's always like it's always marked up. So when they knock off 100 off this weekend at will's ockenden's carpet store, it's actually 200, still profit.

Will Ockenden: 32:33

You see what I mean and the, the old email to the wrong person, that I mean, we've all done that, haven't we? Um, I remember once, um, yeah, once I got an email. I got an email from a journalist, um, when I was doing some media outreach and um, I think it's it is I pitched the, the story to them and then I got one immediately back saying this looks a bit fucking boring, it's up to you. And then I realized it was meant for their colleague and they'd basically sent it back to me critical.

Will Ockenden: 32:59

And then this looks a bit fucking boring, yeah, and then I got good feedback. Yeah, I know, yeah, took that on board constructive criticism to a degree.

Robin Smith: 33:09

Uh, there was a, there was an amazing one. It's actually internal email, um but two fairly senior stakeholders and the guy who sent it long gone. This was about eight years ago in the business now.

Robin Smith: 33:20

So he's moved on, but I think a request came through to him and he wanted to forward it on. To kind of his buddy. He sent it straight back to the person who made the request, just asking, is she dense? Just sent it back to her. So, yeah, I, yeah, I think, yeah, that wasn't me, luckily, but there are definitely learnings in anything like that as well.

Robin Smith: 33:40

I, I would tend not to put an email, you know, that's it that's oh, yeah, yeah it's all too easy to do when you're first starting out, but I think as you go through and the responsibilities grow, and definitely as teams grow and look to you to set an example, that's it. That's a lesson you learn quite quickly.

Chris Norton: 33:55

I think, and if there's someone out there that's starting out in marketing, can I just say to you be careful what you write on email, because it can be fine. That example you've just given there, robin, where someone sends something, or Will's example, it's a bit fucking boring. I like that.

Chris Norton: 34:11

It was to be fair, but but then, yeah, but then when you reply and to each other right, sometimes people reply so you might send something. So will might send something to you, robin, you might go thanks for this, will, it's not fucking boring, and this is okay. And then you might forward that on somebody else, somebody else, and then they have a conversation going robin, this is shit, it really is fucking boring. Then they'll send it somebody else, somebody else, and then it comes back to you and then you go I've got some amendments here, will there you go, will gets it, will gets it. And, um, it's, it's got in the chain. Do you know what I mean? Further down, that's happened to loads of, but where you, it's like five emails. I'll tell you what's what's?

Will Ockenden: 34:47

what's dangerous is you know, when you're responding on your iphone and um, I can never quite work out out what. The way it categorizes emails. It's really confusing and I've I've a few years ago. This is, this is a terrible confession. Actually, I was dealing with, we'll say, a partner agency, we'll say, and I stood on someone's toes, basically, and they sent me a bit of a shitty email and I didn't respond for a few days and then I forwarded it to the team and said I don't why. I said this looks like I've upset this fucker and then I got immediately. I got an out of office pinging back from the person I was talking about and I realized I'd copied them in. But they're out the office and um, there's nothing I could do. But I assume they just deleted it because they're out the office and they must have had hundreds of emails, never got any.

Will Ockenden: 35:33

Um, come back on it, but did you have a sleepless night I was a little bit concerned, yeah, um, but got away with. It's the weekend, it's fine. I was all right by monday. I was um, I'd come to peace I had peace with it.

Chris Norton: 35:44

I had in a previous agency. Someone told me a story of when she, a girl that used to work for me she was an account manager at the time and she told me she worked in a press office of one of the big four supermarkets. Who shall? She worked in the? Uh, she worked in the press office, and there was about eight of them in the press office and, um, the this, this, she sent something to the team and this, this other person said and so the person that was telling the story Amy, if you're out there replied and went, but meant to send it to her mate. What a fucking dickhead. She doesn't know. You know all this sorts of stuff Absolutely went to town on her because she was sending it to a friend, click, send. And then she heard it go across the other side of the office and she said I literally went office. And she said I literally went. And she went over and went. I didn't mean it, it was awful she left. She left the job not long after that.

Will Ockenden: 36:43

Yeah, just don't yeah, you're absolutely right, though, robin, don't you know? You shouldn't be putting that stuff in email, should you? That's, that's the truth.

Robin Smith: 36:49

That's the moral of the story, kids I think it's the moral of the story, but also it's okay to have these feelings like we're all human. Work is quite stressful. I think it's good to come out of it and vent sometimes.

Will Ockenden: 36:59

Just don't do it through official channels definitely yeah, yeah, keep it for the pub this fucker yeah I like that.

Will Ockenden: 37:06

Well, let's, let's, let's. Get back to b2b research for a moment. I think there'll be a lot of um people listening to this thinking I could, I could get more out to b2b research. For a moment, I think there'll be a lot of um people listening to this thinking I could, I could get more out of b2b research and I think, um, you know, in in the last few years, it's, it's kind of really it's really developed, hasn't it? And obviously, you know, service companies like your own are now getting access to this really kind of senior, high quality um kind of panel. Um, something you said, actually you know you, you need about 100 respondents as a starting point is is that pretty much the minimum we would need to make research statistically robust, or could we have less respondents than that if we're talking qual research?

Robin Smith: 37:48

yeah, it's good question. It varies, I think, on various things, but I think the objective is important. Um, you know, if it's for media, it's basically what's going to be accepted by journalists, by those reading it, by peers, especially if there are some either concerning or surprising results. That needs to be have some sort of foundation, strong foundation through numbers. Um, so the easiest way to think about it really is the more general the audience, the larger the sample size you'll need. So, like political polling for national representative studies, for PR 2000 respondents, well-weighted, well-recruited is plenty is fine.

Robin Smith: 38:27

If you're surveying, you know people in employment. It's a slightly smaller tranche, 1,000 you could get away with. And then, if you go up the seniority chain to, you know those with decision-making responsibility, perhaps around 500. Statistical robustness, fascinatingly enough, happens or not, depending if you don't like data or not, happens about 400 respondents, regardless of the sample. What that means is, at 400, 400, that data will be accurate within plus or minus three percent. So that's the variance and it won't get better than that if you increase the sample. So I could have 10 000 response. I have a hundred thousand respondents.

Chris Norton: 39:05

It'll still only be accurate, but between plus or minus three percent, which is the same, as you'll get around four to five hundred that's actually reminded me of something that I wanted to put to robert, if you don't mind, will which is there was two guys at LinkedIn senior guys at LinkedIn and they left based on and this is something for you in your industry on AI, like back to bloody AI, and with this report it's found AI is big in marketing, actually in market research.

Chris Norton: 39:32

There's two guys in AI and they were really senior and they left to set up a startup to use AI and they fed data. I need to find out what company they are and I will for the show notes. They set up a company and they fed the data of various sectors into AI and machine learning. And then now and this has been tested predictively, when they can do surveys with audiences and again back to your point that you've just given it was within 3% of accuracy. So, for instance, for this audience, you've done CMOs in the UK, right From businesses of all different sizes and et. That what? What they're saying is their, their data is robust to within three percent, but it's all ai audiences, which is fascinating to me.

Chris Norton: 40:23

That's a threat isn't it it's a threat um, or is it an efficiency?

Robin Smith: 40:28

it's an efficiency. Actually it's an opportunity as well. If we're completely honest, there's not an awful lot I'm allowed to say. What I can say is, within the last seven days, um, we've had a meeting about how we might leverage that.

Robin Smith: 40:38

You know, I don't think it comes to replace opinion research based on the fact that you want to talk to the humans, especially the qual element. You know, we want to talk to people like we are now. We want to talk to a marketer or, you know, a manager. Give them the marketing and branding and go through it with them and learn about the colors they like or don't like, the text, the message, all the way through to the brand and the narrative that it's telling. I don't think you replace that, especially in the qual side. But even on the quant side, there's just something. There's an unease that comes from having a synthetic they're called a synthetic population to tell your story.

Robin Smith: 41:17

Yeah, again, I think we get back to that place where you've just got synthetic AI, a bit of market research. You've got an opposing one over here and they're kind of locking horns in the middle and by the end of it, no one cares because you've not asked anyone. You've literally not asked anyone. You've run it through a machine. It's a good model, you know. It'd be a great model for kind of political polling, I'd imagine um, for for you know, assessing that on the lead up to elections. It'll be a good model for kind of brand understanding, but I don't think it can come come to replace it. Our hope is that we can leverage it, that we can build it into our services and maybe there's a cost-effective solution as well. I can't stand here and say that that's in play and it is cost-effective yet, but that's something that we're definitely considering, so I'm hoping it's an opportunity rather than a threat. I'd hate to think that all opinions are replaced by AI. That's definitely like singularity.

Chris Norton: 42:13

Yeah, because a synthetic audience for me, right, because it makes sense that it can look and take all the factors and understand the audience and come up with the scenario. But for me it's like when you've got big sort of TV campaigns, right, sometimes it's the unqualified sort of what's intangible. That's the word that works for humans. That wouldn't work logically. So some of the best businesses have been created off unlogical decisions, like the meerkat.

Will Ockenden: 42:47

There's no research in the world that would say people that want to save money on car insurance will engage with a toy meerkat.

Chris Norton: 42:54

Well system. One would argue that actually having a character and an animal in particular increases your um, increases your remember, like emotion and remembering your ad. Yeah, because at least a third.

Will Ockenden: 43:06

I was discussing this with someone the other day. You know, remember the cadbury's ad with that gorilla playing the drums to phil collins phil collins yeah then I suppose it's an animal. But I mean you know that again, there's no research in the world that would suggest that's an appropriate route. I mean other than using an animal and being memorable.

Robin Smith: 43:22

Yeah, and I think we do. I think we get to that situation where there are plenty of things that it could come to replace. You know, it could replace conversation down the pub. I don't think anyone's electing to go and talk to like an ai chat bot whilst having your pint, um. So I think it would be a useful tool for some things. Um, definitely for, as I said, kind of predictive models. Um, it might be a cost-effective solution, but I don't think it'll be picked up by journalists, at least in the foreseeable, because it's just not human enough and you need to speak. You know that's part of good engaging content. Research, especially, is making it engaging and human enough to relate to.

Chris Norton: 44:02

Which leads me to my next question, robin, what percentage of this report was AI generated?

Robin Smith: 44:08

I think I can say 0%. Wow, all of the data collection. Oh yeah, all of the data collection is how we do it normally. Um, you know, it's not manual, it's automated, but it's not ai driven. We have an in-house creative team of xprs and marketers. They wrote the report. Um, that copy was then checked internally in terms of the creative of.

Robin Smith: 44:32

Actually, I'm just going through it methodically to make sure that I've got records 100 in case someone that challenges you on it, which I don't think, yeah yeah, chat GBT flashing up here just saying hang on, and even like the themes I think we decided on definitely AI, obviously, but skills and kind of customer happiness was decided on in the creative session that I was in and I know for a fact there wasn't an AI on average, so I can say 0% impressive. So I can say 0% Impressive, and I think we're going to want to keep it that way as well.

Chris Norton: 45:02

Because my question is this AI loves a spreadsheet, so let's take all your data. What would be fascinating is if we took all your data, your raw data, and plugged it into an AI saying write us a report whether it would be better than the one that was done by the humans because it was the same data. Would it be better or worse?

Will Ockenden: 45:24

How do you quantify better? You'd have to do a report to cmos to ask them if it was better or not.

Robin Smith: 45:27

Yeah it becomes very confusing. I think we're, uh, I think we're still in that stage where there are some.

Robin Smith: 45:31

There are some better tools, and I think gemini is better than chat tv, true, I think yeah probably stuff that was better than gemini, but I think we're still at a stage where I can spot a paragraph written by. Actually, we did test this and forgive me, I don't have the results on me, but we tested with consumers. Can you verify, can you spot the one that's AI generated? I think with formal writing like this, I still back myself and, I think, your audience, your listeners, I back them to spot something that is, yeah, non-human kind of AI generated rather than copied, because actually the beauty of that is that they might go oh, I'd have written that a bit differently.

Will Ockenden: 46:07

that's the human aspect, yeah, yeah, that's not being perfect, but I'd love to see um we can share them in the show notes. But if you can um after the show, if you can send us the results of that study, that would be fascinating. Um. I've got a final question from me, and there'll be people listening to this who are commissioning, have commissioned um, are about to commission b2b research, and we've we've done it a load of times and obviously it's, you know, compared with consumer research. It's a significant investment, isn't it? So people need to get the most from it. What kind of three tips would you give b2b marketers that want to get the most from their um? You know their b2b research project?

Robin Smith: 46:44

um work with me.

Robin Smith: 46:45

No, I'm joking uh well, you can, if you want but actually, you know, leading to work with a reputable organization. I think that's your bedroll, that's your foundation from which to work from. Um research is only as good as the input um, so you need to be sure that the company's reputation is in order. If it's going out to media, the journalists will look at that and go, yes, that's fine, that their processes in terms of data collection and recruitment are in play as well. So work with someone reputable. I think.

Robin Smith: 47:15

Leverage your internal teams we also have a creative team as well but whoever you can to make sure the research is engaging and interesting and kind of puts a foot forward. Again, you don't want to just make noise if it's the same noise as that white paper that your competitor's doing and there's three more that have been produced or in production. You need to think for content research really carefully about how engaging it is, how relevant it is, back to being human and relatable. But it needs to be genuinely interesting, insightful, not just something that people already know and you've just put a bit of data behind, I think.

Robin Smith: 47:53

Thirdly and this might be just a bit of gripe of mine, but it's actually really important to give yourself enough time to really fully plan, a piece of research to put in the legwork at the front end to ensure what I've just said about making engaging and interesting and insightful. Having enough time to collect quality respondents rather than just hashing it out and then having enough time to also do the engaging, insightful bit at the end. Analyzing the data, um, you know, leaving enough time for production and design if it's going into white papers, um, leaving enough time, um, at both ends, to talk to journalists about it. You know what would be interesting and then right, we've got this report. It's interesting. Um, so actually, you know, giving yourself more time than not, and too often we see people not having enough time and kind of rushing it through Good insight.

Will Ockenden: 48:40

thank you for that.

Chris Norton: 48:41

Yeah, I had a question about data science. Do you use data scientists in what you do, then, we don't use a data scientist in the purest form.

Robin Smith: 48:52

I guess. We have worked with companies and on projects where it's combined. So we'll give them some primary data, which is what we collect. They'll take some secondary data. They might also take big data. So if you think about um, you know a payments company, a payment processor. They might get a load of financial spending from consumers from manchester, liverpool, sheffield. Data scientists can then work on that big data and put it into their tools to make sense of it. But they can also use our primary data. So I've been part of projects for companies that that have leveraged data scientists internally um with our data. But we ourselves don't have one in-house um. It's kind of surplus to requirements.

Chris Norton: 49:32

We do have analysts, but I'd say it's a slightly different bucket from how we categorize I only ask for a purely um personal reason, because my nephew is um, is just about to qualify in data science and is actually doing uh, ai and ai masters I would actually say on that I think you mentioned well that you know ai.

Robin Smith: 49:51

You can go to silicon valley and say you know, write a number on a piece of paper and they'll pay. I think data science is not a million miles away really. I think the application of it is huge and I think he or she won't find any issues in picking up a job.

Will Ockenden: 50:04

Yeah, this guy said it was like you know, I think graduate salaries were 250 000 or 300 000 in silicon valley for someone with an ai degree. That's what I was thinking. How long, yeah, how quickly can I learn?

Chris Norton: 50:18

this stuff. It's boring, though, isn't?

Will Ockenden: 50:21

it Prompt engineering, probably, but you get to live in San Francisco, yeah.

Robin Smith: 50:27

Well, you probably need 250,000 dollars to live there.

Will Ockenden: 50:29

I know exactly.

Chris Norton: 50:31

So, robin, thanks for coming on the show. If people want to get a hold of you, what's the best way that they can find you?

Robin Smith: 50:37

The best way to find me is LinkedIn Robin Smith, census um. The best way to find me is linkedin um robin smith, census wide um. Or drop me an email and that's just rob at census wide c-e-n-s-u-s-w-i-d-ecom um. And I'm very happy to talk about research at all times. It doesn't have to be a live project that you're considering. It can be as simple as I don't really know a lot about, but I've been told I need to do more. Get in touch. We do it for marketing, pr and comms. We do it for measurement, and that's measurement of campaigns how did this campaign perform and go which we're doing an awful lot of. We do it for audience understanding who's your customer, who are your personas that you're targeting and how do you target the best. And we do it for, as I said, testing whether that's brand health or whether that's kind of live. I've got three adverts. I want to choose the best one.

Robin Smith: 51:29

So, those are the four kind of main areas we help with. I'm very happy to discuss anything and all things.

Will Ockenden: 51:34

Research within that, and do you want to give people a heads up where they can find or read a copy of the cmo report as well, because I'm sure people will want to um put it in the show notes as well, I think, because we've talked about it absolutely.

Robin Smith: 51:47

Um, you know, if it's also found on our website, so just simple as wwwsensorswidecom. Um, we've actually gone through a slight rebrand, um, so it's nice and good colors and quite engaging. But as part of that there's a little add on and you can click on the report, download it nice and easy. Um, it is an interesting read. As I said, we're hoping it gets more and more interesting, more and more engaging as we repeat it. Um, we'll definitely engage you guys next year when we've done it again and perhaps we can pick up on some of the stuff that we've mentioned in this one definitely, yeah, thanks final question who would you recommend we speak to um in terms of uh interviewing an interesting guest on this show?

Robin Smith: 52:26

I've worked with a woman called miranda mcclain. She's currently at e-com pay. Um, she used to be a banking circle good, just b2b marketing. Um, yeah, we've done various projects on various things. We've kind of moved from pr and marketing research through into um kind of more brand focused research at the moment. Um, she's been a CMO for years, lovely lady, and uh, I'm sure she'd have interesting insights for you. Fantastic.

Chris Norton: 52:52

Yeah, great, great, great recommendation. Uh, thanks for coming on the show, Robin. That was really interesting. Thanks for coming along. Yeah, robin, that was really interesting. Thanks for coming along with. Yeah, we'd love to see you next year and hear about what's changed, if, if anything, I'm sure and and hopefully it'll be can we have a real audience and a synthetic audience next year yeah, absolutely, it'll actually be just like an emoji of my head and some computer voice.

Robin Smith: 53:12

No, look, it's been um a real pleasure to be on this and to talk to you guys and through the report, and I very much look forward to do it again.

Will Ockenden: 53:19

Thanks, thanks robin, thanks mate and to talk to you guys and through the report, and very much look forward to do it again. Thanks Robin, Thanks mate.