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Dig In is your go to source for insights innovation. It's for anyone with a genuine interest in fostering brand and product growth, exploring groundbreaking innovations, and embracing the dynamic world of expanding businesses and brands.
Jess Gaedeke (00:11)
Welcome everybody to the Dig Inspiration episode. I had the privilege of talking with Doug Healy recently from Kraft Heinz, and he talked a lot about the future of the insights industry. So I thought, who better than the one and only CEO of Dig Insights, Paul Gadette, to join me to unpack it. Thanks for joining, Paul.
Paul Gaudette (00:28)
Yeah, well, I'm just going to say the introduction was a little underwhelming compared to what you gave Doug. I mean, you gave Doug the man, the myth. Like, you really hyped it up.
Jess Gaedeke (00:38)
think he's like famous and he, think he gives me a hard time for, for saying that because also feels like he gets some for being so opinionated, but I love to hear his opinions. I love to hear him rant on things. I just think it's, I love his conviction and yeah.
Paul Gaudette (00:40)
Yes, it's true.
Nah, I agree. Yeah.
and honesty actually really enjoyed listening to that episode. I think everybody who's gonna listen to it should listen to that one first, obviously. if you haven't, just stop now, go listen to that one and then come back here.
Jess Gaedeke (01:06)
It's going make way more sense if you do that. actually, I'm going to start with the end of Doug's episode, which is when I ask our guests what brand they would date and what brand they would marry. And Doug was having an off day because he could not come up with the brand that he would No, it is not. It's not an awkward question.
Paul Gaudette (01:08)
I know you
my god.
It's an awkward question.
Jess Gaedeke (01:26)
I'm not going to give you that awkward question, but I am going to say instead, what's a brand that you recently began dating and what's a brand that maybe you've endorsed?
Paul Gaudette (01:35)
I recently began dating. Actually, Disney. I recently began dating I went on my first cruise. got to actually dress like a pirate. kids had a fun time. going through the full Marvel timeline on Disney+.
I'm actually, you and I'm looking at Disney, not in terms of dating, like I'm interested in Disney more of like I'm interested in the co-parent relationship that Disney provides. So I'm looking for more of that kind of type of relationship than I am versus anything else. So Disney is a fantastic prospect of the parent, co-parent for me. So that's when I started dating. one I've...
Jess Gaedeke (02:03)
Wow.
Crazy.
Paul Gaudette (02:17)
either broken up with or maybe divorced recently. okay, there's a couple, I'll tell you, there's a couple things I'm having going on right now. One is, there's one I'm trying to break up with, it's really hard. So that's Amazon. Amazon I'm really trying to break up with.
And every time I do, like, it's just like, it's one of those relationships where it's just all of sudden there's something pops up and it just reminds me of Amazon again. And then I start crying and I just need to go reengage with Amazon and remember the good old damn Amazon. And you know what, the one I, you might, you might disagree with this, but Marriott, I've had a little bit of a bad experience with Marriott recently. You know, a lot of it comes down to the value equation.
It's it's things are expensive and I'm just not sure I'm getting bang for the buck on that especially even the loyalty program. Anyway, so that's one I'd kind of I'm saying I'm breaking up with leaving it there.
Jess Gaedeke (03:01)
Yeah.
am devoted as I think you know to Marriott. I understand in each of those loyalty programs have their issues. Mine's with Alaska Airlines. I would love to divorce Alaska Airlines. They cannot figure out the baggage situation. anyway, but I can't, I'm forced. I'm forced to stay in that marriage.
Paul Gaudette (03:18)
You making
a lot of trips to Alaska?
Jess Gaedeke (03:20)
Yes, Paul, don't you know this about me?
Paul Gaudette (03:21)
But like, how much do you
need to make? How many trips are you taking?
Jess Gaedeke (03:26)
Well, so
I mean, I go once a year, but Mike goes three times because he goes up to help open the cabin for his parents that can't do that alone anymore. And then we go up as a family and then he goes up to close it up. So we have a lot of interaction with the last
Paul Gaudette (03:37)
Okay, a lot
Jess Gaedeke (03:39)
talked about, mean, a lot of things about the Insights industry, but one of the things he talked about is Insights being misframed as a data function, which I thought was really interesting. So from your perspective, the real value that clients need to get from Insights and how does it differ from a data function?
Paul Gaudette (03:55)
very prescriptive question, Let me just start by saying, think I'm going to go back to like, you know, Doug the myth, the man, all that stuff. There's a lot of, I think, similarities between me and Doug, as I was listening to it. 20 plus years in the insights function. You know, grew up in that lower middle income. My mom was a single mom, you know, once one earner in the household.
Jess Gaedeke (03:57)
You're
Paul Gaudette (04:18)
went to college to play football. kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. There's nothing athletic about this. that part is back to similarities. Doug actually talked about his first role in Insights. You know, he was able to get an internship he was exposed to Insights first. And what he really loved about it was the idea of it being a mix between
Jess Gaedeke (04:20)
I was like, is this where the cops stay for?
Paul Gaudette (04:40)
know, psychology, science, storytelling, influence. I think I got all those And being able to affect strategy and help a business grow. And I think when he's talking about how insights has kind of, maybe in some cases more of a data function, it's really because I think we're lacking the ability.
to see the insights within that data. It becomes data for the sake of data, but not true insights. And where I got really excited when I first started out in insights was that you could actually think about how to help a company with their strategy by translating that data into actual business challenges you're trying to solve for. What's the data saying? What are consumers actually saying through that data? And it may not just simply be, you know,
question answer. And it's not like today where it's just automating some simple survey and that's just your output. It's really what is the data saying that gives you true insights on moving the needle within your business. I think that's where it gets kind of lost between insights being a data function and really being true insights.
Jess Gaedeke (05:48)
Well, it's the, it's the so what, right? So there's the what, which could be the data. And then the so what is really the story and what to do about it. And I think that's Doug is really good at, you know, empowering his teams to become indispensable, to be the of the data to the business driver, which was another thing he talked about, which is right up my alley. Cause you know, I love, you know, like obsessed with growth, right, Paul? Like growth, love growth, love it as a concept. Yeah.
Paul Gaudette (06:14)
never heard that before. This is a complete surprise
with you.
Jess Gaedeke (06:16)
But that insights should be a growth function. should, you know, drive monetization. It should be in a P &L. I mean, elaborate on that.
Paul Gaudette (06:24)
For sure.
is where I insert a struggle for a long time. I think Doug recognized that within the conversation you had with him that there was always this trying to understand how the organization see the value of insights and extract the value of insights.
a growth driver. It can be a growth driver. It creates value for the organization. Those organizations that are way more and we've talked about it just a couple of, just even just at the beginning of this, and we're seeing, think, within our space, clear differentiation between organizations who are creating value through services and being customer-centric versus clients who are
trying to create value out of just taking price. And where Insights is really, I think, strong in that is that they're trying to really understand the drivers and motivators of somebody choosing you or your brand or your product or service versus somebody else. piece of information, those nuggets of insights are what really drives value inside of an organization to be able to...
take that and actually use that to drive more sales, more growth, more expansion. That's where insights plays a really key role. think the problem that I'm seeing with organizations recently is that they're leveraging insights from, how can we get a customer just to pay more? And, you know, two years ago, three years ago, everyone took price, everyone up the price inflation was crazy, everyone took price. And now all of a sudden, they're realizing, they got a value problem.
not necessarily value in terms of just everything's more expensive, but value problem in terms of it's not worth what I'm paying for this product or service. I'm not getting what I want out of this. And now all organizations are thinking, where is growth going to come from? Go back to the insights team, figure out where growth is actually going to come from. It might be related to actual price, but a lot of times there's a misstep in the value creation.
Jess Gaedeke (08:22)
Yeah, absolutely. And I love how insights can be that voice of customer to identify those growth drivers. Doug had a really good point and he was challenging this idea that faster is actually better.
So how do you think about that? The need for speed, if you will, but also balancing that with better decision making? Because we have a point of view on this, I
Paul Gaudette (08:43)
if you are on Doug's side, and you are seeing the number of solutions that are coming to you, that promises whatever it is that they're promising in such short amount of time. I can empathize with that being in that position that you all of a sudden the promise is speed. And speed is not actually helping us do our jobs better.
as insights professionals within those organizations. We still have to take that information. We still have to understand what it's saying. We still have to interpret that information related to our business. We still have to actually our internal customers tell them what this information is telling them to help them strategies and what they're doing. So I don't know that from his I would disagree with that statement that, faster is better.
But I think from where we are positioned organization,
we've always felt that there was things just took way too long to do things in the first place. Like it shouldn't take this long to be able to execute against something and get an answer to an organization and help them with their strategy. So oftentimes, you know, the length of time it takes to do something is just a lot of it's process related.
a lot of it's inefficiencies, a lot of it's a lack of innovation, a lack ingenuity. I think where we're trying to take our organization. So I can empathize with his situation where he's seeing so many tools come out and promise everything in such a short amount of time, but lack substance. Whereas I think for us, it's how do you maintain the substance, also improve on the speed so that we're helping clients make decisions quicker, but we're not losing that aspect
rigor that they would come to us for in the first place.
Jess Gaedeke (10:21)
Okay, do you feel like people should or should not cry on hikes? was another kind of healthy debate that I had with that.
Paul Gaudette (10:28)
I'm going to say, always pack a sandwich. Always pack a sandwich. Listen, I'm crying in whatever. I'm all for the feels. If you need to cry, cry. doesn't matter if you're on a hike, you're in a car, on a boat, whatever. You got to cry, you got to cry.
Jess Gaedeke (10:44)
Anything else that Doug talked about that you would like to highlight?
Paul Gaudette (10:44)
Yeah
Jess Gaedeke (10:48)
one that was a precursor, he shared problem is we have these CEOs of these supplier companies that are claiming that claiming unrealists. They're setting unrealistic expectations in the C suite of the client side. And he kind of made the point, we have to be careful that these companies are not
Paul Gaudette (11:02)
Yeah.
you
Jess Gaedeke (11:06)
buying
share of voice and sort of convincing the client side leaders of something that's not true. I thought that was really interesting. And I said, you know, I don't need you to name names, but what types of companies are you talking about? And he really was talking about the new players that are chasing speed without the substance. So I just thought that was really interesting that he was like, vendors are sponsoring these shows and they're ⁓ paying for this message. And it's not always right.
Paul Gaudette (11:30)
Yeah, because you know, he was talking about it like, and I think It's a true concern that insights functions within organizations are shrinking, they're being asked to do more with less. They always have been in it. And he was talking about how it looks fundamentally different than it did 15 years ago. For so many reasons, it's not necessarily that the profession has also changed. It's just what they're being asked to do.
going back to the value that they provide, is being questioned. so to your point, companies come in, they have a new technology, they're promising everything at half the speed or quarter the speed or instantaneous. They're going to the level above and they're saying, we can actually eliminate a whole bunch of these roles because we have technology, they'll solve your problems, answer your questions. But the people who actually get that information still don't know how to translate that data into actual insights.
the insights people at organizations being asked to do even more with this. And I think, you know, we are, we're at a stage where clients are going through what we'd call a migration moment. They are trying to figure out how they can embed the technology, not necessarily top down type of assignment or requirement, but also because it's a smart idea. How do we use technology in a smart way?
that gives us better insights, that helps us make better decisions and also accelerate some of our decision versus having to outsource all of our that we used to do from an insights perspective. But there has to be balance. You have to be able to make sure you can still go find the customer, be in with the customer, understand their motivations and drivers, their barriers, translate that information into insights for the business, and still leverage technology.
And I organizations that don't have that type of client or customer centric mentality from the top are going to very quickly find themselves losing out on the competitive side in a couple of years because they've eliminated the key role within the organization that helps drive that growth.
Jess Gaedeke (13:25)
Yeah, a real risk. thank you for joining me, Paul, for this conversation. It's always good to catch up with you learn a little, laugh a little, you know.
Paul Gaudette (13:33)
Hey, listen, Doug, if you want to go throw a ball around, know, I'm not the guy. I'm definitely not your guy.
Jess Gaedeke (13:39)
my gosh. Okay. Thank you, Paul.