Crispin gives fascinating insight and learnings from across his career, including Behaviorally, Chime Group, mTab, ESOMAR, Insights250 and the MRS with a focus on creating sustainable profitability and excellence in analysis.
This episode is brought to you by Syno International https://www.synoint.com/ For discounts on initial projects contact Jokke Nurminen at jnu@synoint.com
In this episode we cover:
And Crispin's book recommendation:
THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE: STEPHEN R. COVEY
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Follow FutureView on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FutureView7
Crispin gives fascinating insight and learnings from across his career, including Behaviorally, Chime Group, mTab, ESOMAR, Insights250 and the MRS with a focus on creating sustainable profitability and excellence in analysis.
This episode is brought to you by Syno International https://www.synoint.com/ For discounts on initial projects contact Jokke Nurminen at jnu@synoint.com
In this episode we cover:
And Crispin's book recommendation:
THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE: STEPHEN R. COVEY
All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/
Follow FutureView on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FutureView7
Crispin Beale: When you see how that middle bit can be accelerated so quickly, so that a process that used to take days, if not weeks, can now be done in minutes and allow you to do exactly what we were talking about earlier, what the consultants would do, spend the time on really adding value, both framing and interpreting. That's where AI is truly powerful and we think we will see more and more of it.
Henry Piney: Welcome to Future View. Now that's just a short extract from my interview with the very, very insightful Crispin Beale. Crispin is Global President, Behaviorally and CEO of the Insights, 250 winners of which were announced last week. In this interview, Crispin was kind enough to take the time to share insights from his unique journey through the industry, giving advice for businesses and the current economic situation, his views on how to successfully integrate companies, his perspective on AI, machine learning and so much more. He's really done it all and remains a lovely chap to boot.
I learned so much from this interview and hope it's a good listen too. First off though, are you interested in running fast, efficient surveys and appending additional contextual information for targeting across, for instance, panels or CRM databases? If so, let me tell you a little bit about Syno International, our sponsor for this episode, who, as I'll explain, are offering up to 20% of key services for listeners of this podcast. Now, Syno are a super fast growing company out of the Nordics. They now have a worldwide footprint through their global Customer data platform. This takes away the hassle of gathering, storing and enhancing your customer data, all in a privacy compliant manner. You can access DIY solutions so you can run projects yourself or manage services if you need help. Syno now has over 300 clients and you can check them out@synoint.com. That's syno int.com, as mentioned. There's also a special offer of up to 20% of omnibus questions and unique segment reports and 10% of ad hoc surveys by quoting Future View and emailing Jnu@synoint.com. That's Jnu@synointcom.
Henry Piney: So, Crispin, firstly, thanks so much for joining today.
Crispin Beale: Pleasure, it's good to see you.
Henry Piney: Yeah, lovely to see you again. Now, we've got lots and lots to talk about, but first up, if it's okay, I wanted to start with a bit of an ice breaker. So what's one thing most people wouldn't know about you, or that might be a little bit of a surprise?
Crispin Beale: Well, I guess probably most people know that I live on a farm, which I suppose is a bit different for a researcher, but I'm a keen conservationist, so I love living in a natural environment. A lot of people wouldn't know that we have two pet llamas, not your typical farm animals, which makes life a bit more interesting.
Henry Piney: So I was about to ask, are you really like an active kind of farmer? Are you up at 05:30?
Sort of feeding the pigs before you before you start work.
Crispin Beale: I have done that not with pigs, but with cattle. We have cattle and sheep on the farm, but the main thing that it does is making hay, So that requires less management. But we do have lots of people now to help out with these things because there was a year when I agreed I would feed all the cattle and deal with the cats in the barns every morning before work. And I realized that was a lot harder than it looks or you perceive. So I do have a real respect for the big, active, full time farmers, but ours is a very small farm, so I still have to work full time to make sure we pay to subsidize it. We're really paying to live in a beautiful place, a nice environment, but I do like having the animals and the natural environment around credit.
Henry Piney: I bet you're way better than Jeremy Clarkson, by the way.
Crispin Beale: I don't know about that sounding off financially. I think he's made that work. I'm not sure how successful his farm is financially, but indeed, you know, the people that graze and make the hay and do things with this here are always moaning at me because I'm always tree planting and they call it my forestry operations. But I think last year we planted 10,000 trees. So certainly the farming is perhaps not successful financially, but in terms of improving the environment and making it a pleasant place for us and those people that visit or walk along foot path here, I think we're doing a good job.
Henry Piney: Well, you're fat fantastic. That sounds brilliant. So I could probably ask you questions all day about farming, but I probably shouldn't. I should actually jump onto the data and insight world. I wonder if we could just run through the highlights of your career and some of the things you learned along the way.
Crispin Beale: Well, I guess like many people, I fell into it by accident. I read biology, biology and geology at university and wanted to be a conservationist and save the world and then realized that actually that didn't pay to put a roof over your head to buy food. So I ended up training and qualifying as an accountant and then moving into consultancy and then by chance was going to actually go and join Dixon Stores group. And there was a job in sort of business performance and analysis with Dixons that I went along to do. And by chance, the lady that recruited me then called me in just before I was to join and said, look, I need to tell you something. I'm now actually leaving to go and join another department within the organization to set up a research function and I'd really like you to come and join that team and help me set that up. The other dynamic is I'm then going off on maternity leave in a few months. So you'll have a couple of months to get up to speed with everything and then I need you to run that team.
And at that point I really knew practically nothing about research. I'd run a few research projects in my time at Price Waterhouse Coopers, but certainly was not an expert. But I liked this lady. I thought, wow, this is an amazing opportunity. And so I said, yeah, fine, I'll come and do that. And then rapidly was trying to learn the difference between qualitative and quantitative research and what was mystery shopping versus customer experience and realized that I'd entered a whole new world with different terminologies and different challenges that I needed to get up to speed with, but loved it and never looked back.
Henry Piney: In doing these interviews, I haven't had a single person who intended to go into the consumer insight or research world, but they all really love it and for a range of different reasons.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, I can imagine. I think it actually is a real worry for our profession that people leaving university and starting a career don't think about research it's very much all I want to join McKinsey's or Bain or Accenture or one of the big consultants and they miss that. So much of what we do, providing that evidence, is absolutely critical to drive the profitability of organizations and countries and organizations around the world. I mean, that countries, it's so important that people have correct data, correct evidence, if you like to make decisions on, rather than doing things at a whim.
Henry Piney: Yeah, I totally agree. Elliott Linger from Lego, who's head of portfolio development, he was encouraging everybody in his interview. He was saying, researchers, you know so much about the subject area, you've got the evidence, you've got the data. He was saying, be a bit braver, give your opinions. He was talking about the consultancy, he said the consultancies have give lots and lots of opinions, but actually in many cases they may not be nearly as grounded in the subject matter.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, I couldn't agree with that advice more. I mean, my advice always to youngsters and others coming in is be bold, be brave and have the strength of your convictions.
Henry Piney: Yeah, very much so. So going back, obviously not a little while, data Facts International in Chime, you work your way up to group chief exec and so what were the challenges along that journey and how did you reshape the organization?
Crispin Beale: Yeah, no, that does take me back a bit, but I still remember the challenge as well because I joined to be chief executive of Fax International, which was one of the agencies within the Chime portfolio and it was losing money, quite significant money. And I went in, I don't know about the October time, and we were starting to look at the budgets and the year ahead, bearing in mind they had a cost base of several million pounds. So a decent chunk, I don't know, $3 million or say, cost base?
And I said, Right, so how much of that is covered by the revenues and what do we got coming in next year? And everyone sort of looked in a bit blank and I said, well, what projects are now commissioned? What ongoing tracking studies have we got into next year? And then someone said, oh, well, we've got this project, a tracking study with Marks and Spencers, with M and S. I said, Great. How much is that? Well, 25,000. It's like, okay, 25,000 months. No, 25,000 a year. And it's like, okay, well, why else have we got what's covering the 3 million costs? No, we haven't got anything else. All our work is hot. People just ring. And it's suddenly dawned on me that we had $3 million worth of cost and we had $30,000 that time on the exchange rate of revenue. And it's like cranky. This is a scary situation to be. And I think that was the biggest challenge. And my original background. As I said, I've trained and qualified as a chartered accountant.
And so for me, the numbers are always paramount. And it's like, well, what we need to do is transition the business so that we actually know we can always cover our costs. And we need to have a lot more ongoing tracking studies so that we know each month we've got revenue coming in and that will cover our cost base. And as the revenues are higher than the cost, we can then start to grow and invest in more people and new technologies. And so we did set on that journey of transforming and changing from a completely ad hoc business into one where the majority of revenue was predictable and smooth and we could see what was happening. It makes it sound very easy. That was a challenge, and it always is for all research agencies. But understanding and knowing where the cash and I say cash actively rather than profit is coming from is key because we all know that more businesses go bust because they haven't got cash flow than because they aren't making profits. I think particularly for smaller businesses, making sure you are profitable, but you're turning those profits into cash so you can actually do something with it is fundamental.
And I think something I was lucky having had that accountancy background in that I could see things through perhaps a slightly different lens rather than. Well. This is an interesting project and let's get the perfect methodology. The perfect solution. And take three years delivering it and not worry if the client takes another two years to pay much more focused on. Okay. Let's deliver great work. But let's do it in a manner that is profitable so we continue to invest in technology so we can deliver ever better solutions for clients. Because then when you're not growing and you're not a successful agency, clients end up suffering because you can't stay ahead and give them the latest tools and techniques to give them competitive advantage. And that's something that I think I've always held dear. Help your clients win, and then they will come back to you for work. You haven't got to keep going to them trying to sell new things. They're sort of just coming back to you.
Henry Piney: Yeah, I think it's great advice and not to keep referring to other interviews, but I did one with a Garrett Schweitzer who founded Kelton and the monitor material, and Garrett had a really interesting point about projectability and revenue of saying you can ask your clients questions, and you could say, what do you think is coming up? Even if it's not a tracking study, because they're invested in you too. They want you to do a good job for all these obvious reasons.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, well, I remember when I went to Facts International, none of the account teams had phones on their desk. I couldn't understand, how can you possibly be managing clients when you haven't got phones to even talk to them? And there was a lot of email communication and fairness, but I'm a great believer in communication with clients and understanding what they're coming up exactly as you've just described there. And just building the relationship really helps to deliver better results, because it's often a client just talking to us, oh, we're really worried about this, we're worried about that. That actually provides that sort of insight, if you like, into some data that you've seen coming through and joins two pieces together, and you say they're worried about that, and the data is showing that that's why now we can help them. But you don't get that from a cold, transactional sort of email chain. You have to have that relationship with the client to really understand their problems and for them to trust you and talk to you so you can add more value to the business, in my opinion, anyway.
Henry Piney: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And as I said, we might go off track a little bit recently. There have been lots of there's been lots of focus on SaaS platforms and self service platforms and that type of thing, and I'm sure you've seen a range of businesses that are pushing in that kind of direction. So how should they think about maintaining that balance whereby you've potentially got a very profitable business model? It's a platform, but you remain close to the client, so you can continue to adapt to their needs.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, well, I think the two things are interlinked, and I'm a massive believer whether that's the accountant or business person in me, I don't know, rather than the researcher in saying that you need platforms or you need to productize things, you need to actually have a standard solution. But you don't just deliver a standard solution, but you don't want to bespoke and do everything from scratch every time you have a standard, if you like, platform or product. But then you listen and understand from the client how you need to tailor it and how you need to adapt it to solve their business problem. But rather than reinventing the entire project or the entire schematic works every time. If there are certain core elements that are predefined or productized. If you like.
You can then spend and invest the real time in understanding what the hypothesis is and what you're testing and then really interpreting the things that come out at the end rather than spending all of your time in the mechanics and the bit in the middle that doesn't have the value. That has to be right. Because if you're trying to draw insights and interpretation from data that's incorrect or flawed because you haven't got a balanced sample or you've asked leading questions or the plethora of kind of pitfalls within the research world. But if you've got all solid data there. You want to be spending your time on understanding the business issue the client has and then interpreting the best solutions for them and translating them into actionable insights so they can do something with it. Rather than spending all that time in the middle. So I think they go together and you use that technology if you like. And the same applies to AI and artificial intelligence that is there to help facilitate and help speed up the middle part in my mind, rather than actually replacing the expertise and knowledge and experience that consultants, insight professionals, behavioral scientists, whatever you want to describe them as in our profession actually bring to the party.
Henry Piney: I guess what you're broadly saying is that if you can sort of productize and inverted commerce 90% of the things that are consistent, then you can really spend the time focusing on the added value and helping clients solve issues.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the important bit. So often it's those two bits that get missed. Other people rush into field without fully understanding the business challenge, the business issue that a client is trying to solve and understanding if the immediate thing they've talked to you about is if there are nuances or different bits. You need to understand that people want to get into field so they don't spend the time on it. The other thing that happens, and I've seen far too often in my career, is that people have deadlines fieldwork and things get delayed. It doesn't matter what methodology or how you're doing it, things always end up getting delayed or someone's sick or there's holidays and then there's this mad panic at the end to produce the final output. And the real danger that happens far too often is not enough time is then spent really understanding, really interpreting, really linking it to different sources of data and you get some half hearted media acre analysis which is nowhere near as strong as it should be.
And that's where I think the research industry often falls down because they spend so long on the actual process in the middle chunk. Whereas if you compare with a McKinsey or a consultancy, they would very much focus on actually really thinking what does it mean for the client and how are they going to use it? And that switch, if you like, is 90% spent on the end bit and everything up to that point. The fieldwork as such is almost irrelevant. That's just taken as being robust and reliable and they deal with actually using their intellect and their experience to add value. And I think that is an important thing lesson we could learn from the consultancies and you hear so often I've heard throughout my entire career, why are we not taken seriously in the boardrooms? Why are researchers not in the boardrooms? It's always the consultancies and I don't think that's always true. I think some of the good researchers who operate more like a consultancy often are in the boardroom and adding valuable insights. But I think on the whole, the answer to that question is because we're not providing the same intellectual rigor, the thinking, the value add that a consultant just thrives on doing. And if we focus more on that, rather than telling them that at the 95% confidence level this means X, Y and Z, most boards just take that as read. They're not interested. They want to know what are we going to do with it? How are we going to get a return on investment? How are we going to make money or save money on our business from this? And that's where consultants come into their own.
Henry Piney: It's interesting. Do you think that also applies to to more measurement type businesses? Because you still feel there's a role there to say, we've measured it, it's robust, the methodology is right, but here's what it means.
Crispin Beale: I think it's always important to interpret it and that's a fair challenge. Henry most of the roles I've been in have been very much on that more strategic consultancy side and that's what I enjoy doing. But there's a lot of what I'd almost call retail audits or compliance exactly where it's very much we've introduced these new products. Were they on the shelf in all these stores? Were they priced correctly? Was the merchandising correct or mystery shopping? Did the Till assistant do X, Y and Z and did they say this and do that? Those kind of things. There's probably less interpretation needed, but even so, I'd still say that's the value add, if you gave that data to a consultant versus a researcher, the researcher would probably tell you, yeah, we've got 95% compliance. If we extrapolate that across the estate, it means X and Y and the mystery shopping results are all objective, therefore that's 100% certainty. But this customer survey is objective. So there's a margin of error of X percent on your sample of why, whereas the consultant would more be saying you could make an extra $10 million across your estate by actually getting people to do this more. Now, which one is going to get the board excited? I would argue always give the analysis in the interpretation where you can yes.
Henry Piney: And I can imagine even in a scenario where it's an auditing type function, you can still provide context as to whether this is the type of level that is acceptable or not acceptable. And because you're doing it, I imagine, for a whole range of different clients, you can also provide recommendations off the back of that, even if you're not sufficiently embedded like McKinsey or Abandoned might be, to understand their profit margins and all the rest of it.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, I definitely agree. And I've seen that kind of taking an example back in my days in retail where we had mystery shopping programs and we were seeing very high levels of compliance and people were very happy with that. But we were then providing the overlay and saying that those stores that aren't compliant to getting better sales results because you are testing compliance with the wrong thing. You are asking people to do something and they're doing it. The customers don't want that and don't like that. Bizarrely, the small number of stores that aren't compliant are getting better customer experience results and better sales results. Now, if we hadn't been looking at that through the lens of a consultant almost and saying, well, yeah, that's our mystery shopping program and it's showing 90% compliance, but we were combining it with the other data to say that actually that's not a good thing, there's a problem here and we need to fix that. So I think that interpretation that looking outside the box and thinking about what is the business kind of issue we're trying to fix or trying to address is critical and it doesn't often happen. I remember the research team to say, this is fantastic, we've got 90% compliance, but it's not worth it, our sales figures aren't right. And then you saw that the sales figure is completely in the opposite direction for the noncompliant stores. You can start to build hypothesis, then test those, explore it, and then you go to the board with a real valuable insight that we've got the wrong strategic initiative in stores and even though staff are doing it, it's not working for us.
Henry Piney: Yeah, I think that's a great, great example. So, Crispin, just jumping back into your storied career, to use the American kind of phrase. So going through China, could you just talk through a little bit of what you did there?
Crispin Beale: Yeah, of course. Well, I guess having arrived at Facts International, it went well. We transformed it from a loss making business into one making several million pounds a year in terms of EBITDA. And then I got asked to take on and run all of the research and insights agencies across the Shine Group. So I guess opinion leader and brand democracy Caucus, various other agencies at that time, and then we continued to expand. We launched a digital agency, Watermelon, which was very focused on real time reporting and using algorithms to generate insights and move better, faster, cheaper, if you like, as the Samaritan Sorrow would have described it in those days, and then launched the business, both the PAX business and the Watermelon business, out into Australia. So I was there ten years and had a whale of a time. We did double digit growth, I think, every one of those ten years, and turned it into a decent agency group, making millions of millions of pounds worth of profits rather than losing money. And as I say, I was there about ten years and enjoyed every single minute of it and met some interesting people and visited some interesting places around the world as we expanded and carried out international projects. So good fun.
Henry Piney: And how did you get everybody to pull together then? Because it's an industry that's full of opinionated, bright people who tend to have quite strong opinions, like a lot of industries. How did you manage that across a range of agencies to get everybody aligned?
Crispin Beale: It was a bit like herding cats.
Henry Piney: At times, mean cats maybe.
Crispin Beale: It was definitely a challenge, I agree. But we tried to communicate. I mean, communication is key. We'd have a weekly meeting where we'd all talk through the big challenges coming up, the big accounts that we were winning or going through. We would then have a weekly email that went out to the whole team talking about what we're doing and just trying to bring people closer together on a day to day basis and socially through big team social events and operating as one team. So that all of a sudden it became you're interacting with friends, not someone in a different agency. And then it becomes far easier to say, actually, this brief has come in and it would be far better serviced by Agency X rather than our agency. And it's not like just giving it off to another agency, it's like, oh, that's my friend Caroline or Shanade or whoever, I'm going to actually pass that piece of work to them and it becomes less of an issue. But I'd be lying if I said that was easy. I think that's always a challenge when you have the big mergers and acquisitions in our space, as we've been seeing increasingly in recent years, that you end up with different cultures, different styles, and they can clash and it can be counterproductive.
Henry Piney: So crystal in that example.
Henry Piney: How do you manage it, though? If you've got agency A potentially could do the project, but Agency B would be better suited. Do you try to align everybody at the top level in terms of some form of incentive or bonuses? Is that how you got over that type of issue?
Crispin Beale: Yeah, I think having everyone aligned and heading in the same direction is absolutely important and we try to very much say that bonuses were based not just on performance, but on how you did things. Because we had some of our best salespeople who were brilliant at selling, but to be honest, people hated working with them, they didn't enjoy working with them, they weren't felt to be team players. And we said, well, no longer, you're going to get the best bonus because you've done the best selling. We're now saying half of your bonuses based on how you interact with other people and that helped a lot, I wouldn't claim. We always had the answers. Occasionally someone would think, oh, I want to do that project because I'm really interested in it, all the clients, my friend, and if I'm going to run this out of this area and then all of a sudden we'd end up pulling people in from other areas rather than handing it an account manager the whole thing from the best place. But we got a lot better at it and I think our clients noticed that. And having one unified brand I think really helped. We increasingly, towards the end of my time there, operated everything as Chime, insight and Engagement and had subbrands underneath. But on the big and the new projects we would pitch as Chime rather than pitching as an individual agency.
Henry Piney: Did you have a central business development function?
Crispin Beale: Yeah, we did have a central team, which helps a lot as well. But I'll be honest with you, we had a very light team of marketers because I was always a great believer in that people don't want sales people going out and selling them something and then they never see them again. I always felt that it was important at the pitches and the initial conversations that a person would actually be managing the project was involved in talking to them. And I've always found that that helps because you end up with various problems, you know, you end up with someone selling something they don't truly understand that is actually then difficult to deliver and then that upsets everyone, the client and the teams. Whereas if you've actually got a practitioner who understands the limitations, understands the business problems in more detail, they're actually immediately going into solution mode with the client rather than just trying to sell something or business, which fundamentally is what business development is.
Henry Piney: Yeah, it's interesting. It's a challenge I think that lots of agencies have had in terms of the seller, do a model where you get the balance right, but maybe also there's a difference between the product size type of process you were describing where you're not actually selling a product, where you can just have sales people who sell it and move on. But you have introduced productization, I guess, if that's the word, sort of into it to be as efficient as possible. So Kristen, moving on a little bit. So after Chime you moved on a. Whole series of board roles and consultancies, including becoming an advisor at MTab. So that's, I think, a really interesting business. I remember they pitched me, I don't know, like 1015 years or so ago, but it's really, really changed over recent years. So how has the business changed? And what are the trends that have informed that change?
Crispin Beale: Yeah, that's a good point. Yes, I mean, Mtab have been around for 30 years or so. They've changed, but not changed. I'd argue, I guess whatever it was 35 years ago in a California garage, I think they set up trying to help people undercover, deeper insights, whether they were in marketing or customer functions. And it was all about helping to democratize that information and help analyze it and bring it together. And I think in some ways, that's still what they do. I mean, now they're really sort of, if you like, the world's leading insights marketplace, where they're bringing together all different sources of data and allowing people to access that in real time and just access the slice they want. So rather than buying an entire the Kantar Global Monitor study, the huge, massive study, if people just need to buy a chunk of that now, they can access that in real time from Mtab They can then buy in some information from Ipsos, from countless other sources, thousands of sources, analyze all of that together. They can still use the MTab tools that you would have been pitched 1015 years ago to analyze and discover, and stories and tools to actually help democratize visualize that data are still there. But now it's very much about not just having syndicated studies dropped in, but having big studies, loads of reports, content from ESOMAR, content from others that you can instantly go to and find out. I've got a problem. I've been asked to research the automotive or the electric vehicles market in Germany. I have no idea where to start. You can go to marketplace, type that in, and instantly see right here's these ten reports on that subject. I need. That one you can literally buy, or it may well be a free report that you don't have to pay for and just access that consume the report. Look at the data sets. If you want to drop those data sets into their analysis tools, you can do that, learn more about it, and literally sign up to subscriptions and things. So when the next report on EVs in Germany comes up, that they will alert you if you want to. So you find that you have the data pushed to you rather than having to keep abreast of the marketplace and see what's happening. So a fantastic model and a great CEO, Mark Langsfield over there, who's really driving it forward and, as you say, has transformed what they do to take it to a whole new level, but I'd say still staying true to their core foundations. As to allowing people access to information and being able to then democratize that information around organizations and visualize it in ways that is user friendly.
Henry Piney: Yeah, it's really clever. And I'm not going to name some of the alternative sources because I don't want to do those kind of companies down, which would be unfair. I really like that idea. You can go in, you can see the range of whole load of different suppliers, what's available, slightly kind of pick and choose and as part of a marketplace.
So Crispin moving on. You're now global group president for behaviorally. I wanted to push you on something a little bit around this because you've long been known around kind of shopper research and then there's quite a lot on the website about how you're using AI to modernize, to accelerate the process. So persuade me that the AI thing isn't total nonsense and it's not just like sales, blah, blah.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, fair challenge. And it's an interesting one because I often get asked, will AI replace people? Will there be no researchers? And I guess I alluded to it a bit earlier and I think absolutely not. I think the huge benefit of AI is speeding up that middle process. And when like behavior, you've got a database of 18 million shopper observations, applying AI and technology at that to draw conclusions, to help test hypothesis, to look at things and speed things up, allows us to move at a greater pace. And again, I mentioned Sir Martin Sorrel, who I guess a few years ago now, sort of said that, look, all clients want is everything to be better, faster, cheaper. And I think the general consensus was that you had to pick two of those three things. You couldn't have all three. But the advent of AI and technology, I think, means that you can have all three things because it allows you to do that middle bit that can be automated far faster.
Henry Piney: It's not that the world is going to be taken over by AI and machine learning. It's really, really speeding up an important part of the process and hence facilitating the role that humans can play.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, some people believe that. Some people believe that AI can do the whole piece, and I personally don't.
Henry Piney: Think it can, which is a very nice link, by the way, to your involvement in the Mrs over the years in Som. So what's your remit there, Crispin, in terms of those organizations and what they're trying to achieve?
Crispin Beale: Yeah, sure. Well, I sat on the board of the Mrs for, I think, 16 years now. Far too long. I'm coming off.
Henry Piney: Oh, I don't think so.
Crispin Beale: Well, it's nice. I think sometimes having that knowledge and understanding of things that have happened in the past helped to accelerate decisions and make sure we don't go over the same ground again. Well, you can revisit things because times have changed and it's sensible to revisit them, but it's good to have the vast knowledge and then for ESOMAR, I guess for a decade now, again longer than I probably should, I've been the sort of UK representative, along with various colleagues over the years. And for me, often people say, well, how are you? Within the Mrs, which is the association for the United Kingdom and an ESOMAR, which is a global association, aren't they competitors? I'm always very, very clear that there's much more for us to gain by working together. Professionals in the industry and in our space want various associations around the world to support each other and champion our industry, not be fighting, not be trying to score points from one another. And the associations, I think, increasingly do work together. And that's nice to see, but there are still times where perhaps there's more conflict than there should be. But my involvement with both of them, and indeed I'm Chief Executive of Insight 250, a sort of reward scheme, is always predicated on the how can we raise the profile of the great things going on in our industry. And it's nice whenever you can do that. And another example there. So ESOMAR are now a prime sponsor and involved with the Insight 250. There's fascinating talent out there, but we don't talk about it, we don't celebrate it enough. So whether it's MRS, heroes within the Research Heroes within MRS that they launch, or the significant insights, 30 under 30 awards, the Opinium and James Endersby Run fantastic initiative, I love to try and help all of these things because that's what I think helps us stay ahead. People can learn from the best practice they see and get inspired by it and it encourages them to step up and do more in the industry as well. So that, in a nutshell, is why I've always tried to support MRS and ESOMAR.
Henry Piney: Well, amen to that and very glad to support in any small way I can, or any of the businesses I'm involved with, the early stage agencies that are trying to make their way but have now got to end of 2022. What advice would you give them?
Crispin Beale: Okay, well, going into what is almost certainly going to be some kind of recession in many markets around the world, if we're not already in a recession in many markets, focusing on cash is absolutely fundamental. We touched on it earlier and I think particularly for smaller and medium sized businesses, that is crucial. More companies will go bust coming out of a recession because they run out of cash and because they're not profitable. And I think I saw some stats the other day that say when you go through these big recessions, about 17% of companies don't survive. Half or so I think stay about the same and come out of it, but that 17% of companies won't survive. That's a heck of a lot. So definitely stay focused on cash, but thinking slightly more medium term. I go back to what I said earlier. I think being bold, being brave, not being scared to look at new technologies and new approaches being used in different markets, different professions and thinking how can they be applied to our industry or blatantly stealing from other sectors. There's no harm if you see some really interesting research or techniques being used in the FMCG market but you're in financial services. Think about how can we adapt that? How can we change that, how can we steal that approach, if you like, and to use it to give competitive advantage for our business, that would be my advice there. And the only other piece, I think, which is more of an industry piece that it would be almost wrong of me not to raise is the importance of thinking as well where you're actually talking to end consumers rather than the retail audits or passive measurement, which I think will become much bigger things and AI will be used more to drive those techniques. But where you're talking to respondents, think about that respondent experience because participation rates have been going through the floor and that is a real danger. We need to make sure we're talking to a robust group of people in robust sample, otherwise that data we're gathering is irrelevant. It's sometimes like talking to an echo chamber. You just get the results back because you're talking to likeminded people who actually want to engage and respond with you. And there's lots of techniques, gamification being one, to try and make it more engaging and more interesting for participants. But that is going to become absolutely crucial, I think, as we move forward. So people need to be mindful of that and mindful of using the latest technologies to make sure that they can get the results without always having to rely on primary data and going straight out to a respondent to get their answers.
Henry Piney: So, reading between the lines, you might also be saying don't inflict 35 minutes surveys with huge grids, no color or dynamic programming in them and expect to get good responses.
Crispin Beale: Exactly. It still happens though, Henry. It is horrifying the number of times we get these long grids and the agencies will say, well, it doesn't matter because we rotate the questions. So you're not always asked how satisfied you are with except number 35. Sometimes it's number one or number two. But consumers are bored. The technology is there now to have the bait and responses. Ask a simple question to give a score, if you like, for MPs or something like that, and then ask them why are you saying that? What are you thinking? And then use text analytics and others to draw out the insight. Where you can get clever is that in real time, if they're mentioning something, you're interested in following up with a series of specific questions tailored around that and the feedback you got from respondents. I call them respondents, it sounds like from real people like you. And I was like, wow, that was brilliant.
That survey felt like actually I was being asked about all the things I wanted to talk about. Now that's a great survey because you don't want to generate a problem where there isn't one. I give you so I'm conscious of time. I'll give you an example of that. I've seen surveys where a supermarket so what did you think about the queue? Can you score the queue? How you think about it on a scale of one to ten? And the respondent hadn't actually thought there was any issue with queuing whatsoever, they weren't bothered about it. But now they think, well, actually, now you mention I did have to queue and so that's a bit of a problem. So actually, I'm only going to score four out of ten for the queueing experience. I didn't like it. So you've done two things there. First of all, you've created the perception that there's a problem with queues in that organization. The person now thinks there's a problem with you when they didn't before. And secondly, you've then identified to the organization and these people are scoring four out of ten and you need to go and fix queuing. What you didn't actually do is ask this person about trolleys and they hate the fact that the last three times they've been to that store, the wheels on the trolley have jammed and they've had a really bad experience there. But when the researcher was coming up with their battery of 50 questions or whatever, they didn't think, or it didn't make the cut to ask about trolleys. So the respondent never got to talk about the thing that was concerning them and instead they've talked about something that wasn't an issue. They've made it become an issue for them and the organization and you have not solved the actual thing. So I think those kinds of things are so important.
Henry Piney: Yeah, I totally see what you mean. So, as you say, it should be easy enough now to ask a simple open ended question, what did you enjoy today? What worked well, what didn't work well, and then follow up with the questions rather than the whole round of preconceived answers and issues.
Crispin Beale: Yeah, and the text is there. You ask the open ended, they talk about queuing, then direct them to a battery of questions about queuing. If they don't mention queuing, don't ask them anything about them, you know about it, or maybe one diagnostic question, if you really must. But then if they do mention shopping trolleys, then you can have the interviewer or through text analytics, online probe about trolleys and what is it about trolleys or what was the problem. There weren't any trolleys, they were dirty. They find out what the real issues are and what consumers want to tell us, rather than just almost have the arrogance to say, right, we're going to ask about these 30 things and bore people to death with that rather than understanding what's really going on in the business.
Henry Piney: Yeah, I see what you mean. I think it's a great practical example, especially where technology should be used to create a better survey experience and actually a more purposeful outcome for the client. I am conscious of time, though, so I'm going to move on to the quick far round. So, first question, biggest differences between doing business in the US and the UK?
Crispin Beale: I think speed. I think everything is much faster and there's much turnaround just has to be much quicker in the US and the UK, while in Europe in general.
Henry Piney: And you'd say that the turnaround has to be faster. Is decision making faster in the US as well?
Crispin Beale: Yeah, I think so. I mean, obviously it's a generalization, but in my experience, in FMCG in particular, in the US, things are far faster than anywhere else in the world.
Henry Piney: Got you. What have you changed your mind about recently?
Crispin Beale: It's a difficult one. I guess the thing I've changed my mind about most is that you can have better, faster, cheaper, and the advent of AI has meant that you can have all three. Whereas in the past I was a firm believer that there was a trade off and you had to choose two of the three, whereas now I think you can go for all three.
Henry Piney: Got you. Another tricky question. Are you a believer in crypto? Why not?
Crispin Beale: Well, these are difficult questions. I do like them. Henry? No, I don't think I am a believer in crypto at the moment because I think it's too volatile and I think people like certainty and I think there's a real trust gap at the moment with crypto as well. But having said that. I do think it will come. And I think that there will be a sort of evolution of crypto and you will have an institution here in the UK. Like the bank of England. Someone offering an equivalent that has all the benefits of crypto or perceived benefits of crypto. But with that trust and security of a familiar organization that has seen underwriting it and can guarantee it. So I think it will come, but not in the format it's in at the moment.
Henry Piney: Yeah, I hear you. So maybe the last one, which is around reading or listening. I'm sure you're busy and it may be very tricky to get enough time, but what's your favorite book, or even kind of recent book and why?
Crispin Beale: Well, I do have I very much have a favorite business text, which would be The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R Covey., I think it is, if anyone's looking for it, and I love the stuff he's got there on paradigm shifts and about really seeing things from someone else's perspective. And it's not a research book, it's a general management book. I think I was asked to read it way back when I was at Cooper's, so a very, very long time ago, but I think the learnings and lessons in there are still highly relevant and throughout my career I've often bought that and given it to aspiring managers within my teams because I think it's a nice easy read as well. But it has lots of AHA moments where you think, actually, that's so obvious, why didn't I think of that before? Yeah, that's a lesson I can take and apply from tomorrow.
Henry Piney: Fantastic. Thank you. I must actually go and read it. I've never read it, but I will put it on to high up on the list.
Crispin Beale: It's a good read.
Henry Piney: Christine, thank you so much. It's been really great and absolute pleasure talking to you, as always.
Crispin Beale: It's a pleasure. I've enjoyed it. Thanks, Henry.
Henry Piney: Well, I thought Crispin was incredibly gracious in giving both his time perspective and
Putting up with my slightly cheeky questions. He's so insightful and a great guy.
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