Real Reality: Connecting with people to power brand success

Your brand’s perfect customer isn’t standing still as the world moves. They’re taking part in modern society every day, living life and adapting to what’s happening around them. They’re waiting for you to listen so that you can build something better, just for them.

Dive into the world of Real Reality by listening in as senior leaders from Pernod Ricard, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Ipsos explore how you can harness the power of human insight to tailor your products better and connect with audiences looking for relatable brands.

This session is part of our ongoing Insights to Activate series featuring actionable insights to drive business success. Be sure to revisit some of our previous topics.

Key highlights and takeaways:

• Designing for the "vibrant fringes" creates universal success:

- Janelle James emphasized that by focusing on the "vibrant fringes," users with the most constraints or those from underrepresented groups, UX and product teams can create more robust, universally successful platforms because these users highlight the flaws in average design first.

“When you focus on the customers with the most constraints, you end up designing something that works for everyone ... When you focus on the vibrant fringes or the underserved, underrepresented audiences, you end up creating better products because they are navigating systems and experiences that weren't created for them. They were created for the average.”

• Data science requires human insights for context:

- Natasha Hritzuk pointed out that relying solely on "walled garden" platform data creates user segments that lack actionable meaning for marketers and product developers, making human context essential to bring the data to life.

“Data scientists are brilliant, but they're mathematicians. So, you know, they are looking for numerical connections that sometimes don't make sense without context... The minute you fold in people's relationship to content ... it brings the segments to life. So I think data, again, is helpful at understanding behavioral clusters ... But I think without that understanding of the human, who are these guys and why are they watching content ... you do need the insights for that.”

• Gen Z's risk aversion drives content discovery:

- Natasha Hritzuk revealed that Gen Z craves deep engagement but suffers from profound risk aversion due to choice fatigue. Critically, they often choose older, established media properties to guarantee a return on their time investment.

“What we found is that that was driven by a profound risk aversion. ... The last thing you want to do is carve out that time, start watching something new and it's horrible. And then you've set aside the time, you've built up the anticipation and it's like an aborted journey. So they were going back to older shows ... if it stood the test of time, if it had been around for 20, 30 years, and if there were multiple seasons, by definition, it had to be good.”

• Balancing "bullseye relevance" with broad reach is essential:

- Anna Estlund highlighted that brands must balance creating highly targeted, culturally relevant products with maintaining broad appeal. Success comes from starting with deep, specific human truths and scaling them outward, rather than starting broad and hoping to connect.

“We're both talking about the idea of bullseye relevance and broad reach and the balance... The human learning I think usually starts with the bullseye relevance. So then you have to figure out how you can get broad reach. But you’ve got to start with the bullseye relevance.”

• Using human insights to myth-bust executive assumptions:

- Anna Estlund highlighted how qualitative human research is essential for challenging preconceived notions, particularly regarding demographics like Gen Z. She said observing real behaviors uncovers nuanced needs that contradict the assumption that younger people only want digital, frictionless experiences.

“That's another place where the human voice matters so much is almost myth-busting people's assumptions [about Gen Z] ... Because we did human research and had people in the aisles shopping for alcohol — they're literally looking on their phone, calling their friend, asking staff, because they're just not as familiar with the category yet. And so all of that understanding for us was really helpful to then bring to our leadership to say, ‘Oh, it's not that they only shop online, don't like shopping in the store, don't want to talk to people. No. They actually need a little bit of help and education.”

• Top creatives use research to refine and shape their final products:

- Natasha Hritzuk shared a story about acclaimed filmmaker Ryan Coogler to illustrate that even the most visionary creatives rely on audience insights. She highlighted how Coogler used stacks of research not just as an initial input, but as a crucial tool to polish the emotional resonance, calibrate the narrative, and refine the final product.

“Ryan Coogler... somebody who's that creative who comes up with something like ‘Sinners,’ you would think wouldn't have any appetite for research. And he did a town hall with like, all of Warner Bros. Discovery. ... He said, ‘You have your narrative. You know the story you want to tell, but that final polish is understanding, like, did we dial up the emotion too much? Did we run flat? Do we need to amplify something?’ And he said, ‘I really relied on research.’ … He actually was using it to refine and shape the final product, which I think was fascinating and so heartening that this amazing creative was using research as a tool in his process.”

Full transcript:

Ben Meyerson (00:11):

What does it take to break through in the modern world? That's the question. Brands ask themselves every day as they look to innovate new products, build new audiences for their existing ones, and speak to shareholders eager for answers in a fragile economy, while businesses face huge pressures in a world that's constantly being reshaped by ai, brands have clear lanes to take on the road to victory if they lean in with a human touch. Hi, welcome to Insights to Activate Ipsos series, focusing on some of the biggest topics facing the world today. I'm Ben Myerson, vice president of marketing and communications here at Ipsos, and I'll be your host as we talk about how your brand can get ahead by capturing the mess of real life. We have a great group of experts here today from Warner Brothers Discovery Pernod Ricard, and Ipsos, all of them can help your business find its way through this brave new world.

Ben Meyerson (01:03):

But before we get to our panel, I want to talk about why humans are still so important in this AI powered world. As the modern world accelerates, people are grasping for connections everywhere they can find them. A turbulent economy, polarizing politics, and the prospect of massive change driven by artificial intelligence. All these factors are making people feel uncertain about their lives. Yet amid these major shifts, Americans aren't retreating into their shells. Instead, they're escaping to individualism compared to their global peers. Americans are much less likely to have choice fatigue in modern life, while 61% of people in 43 markets around the world say they feel overwhelmed by the number of choices available to them. Only 49% of Americans say the same. And as society has evolved over the last decade, plus, Americans are leaning into that choice more than ever, especially brand choice. The number of Americans who say they're willing to spend extra for a brand with an image that appeals to them has risen 15 points in the last decade plus. So how can brands take advantage of Americans keen interest in individualism amid the rapidly changing modern world? The answer is twofold. Capture the real reality of society by talking to real people with all the messy imperfections that make them fascinating and turn that real human data into authenticity that drives your products and outreach breaking through the fragmented market. So let's talk to some humans here at Meter Panel.

Janelle James (02:35):

Hi, I'm Janelle James. I am a senior vice president at Ipsos, and I lead cultural intelligence, which means I have the opportunity to help us advance our research approaches so we can better connect with more expansive groups of people.

Natasha Hritzuk (02:51):

Hi everyone. Natasha Hritzuk and I lead corporate research at Warner Brothers. Discovery. Corporate research, I know can mean a thousand things. So for us it means explicitly that we focus on landscape strategy, what's happening in the world today that we need to be paying attention to as an industry. We also want to peek around the corner because you don't want change to happen to you. So we're focused on innovation and then of course technology, which these days means ai, which is sort of ironic given that we're talking about real humans and AI's, you know, there's obviously some tension there.

Anna Estlund (03:23):

Yeah. Hi everyone. Anna Estlund. I'm the vice president of strategy, insights and analytics at Pernod Ricard. We are one of the biggest spirits and champagne companies. So I work on across the portfolio on big brands like Jameson Whiskey. Absolute Vodka Monkey 47, janica, go On. And I've been at Pernod for about five and a half years.

Ben Meyerson (03:43):

Great, thank you. So excited to have everybody here today. Let's take it off here with a question for Natasha. You talked a little bit about how entertainment plays when it comes to insights. I want to get in into that a little bit more here. So entertainment is inherently personal, right? How do you research audiences to create content that works at a large scale, but also connects with people personally?

Natasha Hritzuk (04:08):

Well, yeah, that's an interesting question. I mean, you know, there are always going to be instances where you are creating content that is aligned against a specific audience. So, you know, a classic example of that's young adult stuff like euphoria, for example, would fall into that category. But I think particularly in the theatrical business and on the studio side, scale is really important. We do a range of studies but I think when you're doing landscape research, you're talking to different communities, you're talking to different generations. What you're always looking for are those common underlying themes. And even with some of our peak around the corner research looking at how people's tastes and content is evolving we're still finding the themes that the themes that are emerging today are becoming, we think going to be even more attenuated in, in in the future.

Natasha Hritzuk (04:58):

So the stuff that's coming up in the research that we're doing on contemporary audiences, the future trends are already, you know, I think picking up some of the things that we're hearing in amplifying them. So, concrete example, I think, you know, and it's so funny in this world where we're confronted with artificiality, and actually this is appropriate given what we're talking about today. One of the core themes that we see come up time and again, is that people want to feel invested in characters. You know, I think there's been, you know, CGI films have their place, action films have their place where the characters are almost peripheral to the narrative and the action and the special effects. But I think people, there's an element of weariness, and as humans, we want to connect to other humans. So one of the things that we, we call it an opportunity areas around real humans.

Natasha Hritzuk (05:44):

People want to see characters going through things that they can relate to. So that's probably one of the second areas that we've uncovered. And I won't go into everything, but just to give you a flavor for how we think about scale, which are universal human truths, since humans, I, I mean, I can't speak to like prehistoric people, but you know, we can, I mean, maybe I can, I'm kind of getting to that age, but there are certain things that we all go through loneliness, we go through aging you know, dealing with aging parents. We go through financial stress, and people want to see characters going through those journeys. And in many instances this is where we see ideological divides. Conservatives typically want to see it all wrapped up. Like we want a happy ending. We want to see that arc end up in a good place.

Natasha Hritzuk (06:30):

But we find that some audiences like a bit of ambiguity, like, you know, they went through the journey and didn't quite get to that landing pad. But I would say from a scalable pers perspective, people are looking for that narrative, that struggle, and then some sort of endpoint that, you know, gives us hope that there's, you know, a light at the end of the tunnel. So it's, it's tricky research. It's largely cross study theme identification and knitting together those big picture insights that we can then feed to our stakeholders and say, look, this is stuff that we're seeing across multiple audiences. It's present stuff, but it's also we think can be amplified in the future. And it really speaks to our time. So does, I hope that that gets at what you're saying. Oh,

Ben Meyerson (07:16):

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so I'm very interested in dialing in the how you get from the individual human insights Yeah. To the more, to the super relatable human outputs, right? What is there, is there magic in the middle that happens to translate that before capturing the real reality to the output of capturing the, putting out something that is really so deeply relatable to people?

Natasha Hritzuk (07:40):

I mean, you know, this is the thing about content creation. There is an alchemy. I mean, to a certain extent, as researchers, we can provide what we call them, more guardrails. Like, you're not going to go to a creative and say, the movie has to have this, it has to have this, it has to have this, it has, you know, it, it, it wouldn't be, they wouldn't be creatives if you were giving that, that kind of guidance. But what the research does is it gives them areas of inspiration, areas of focus, areas to dig into. So when you think about development teams who are reading scripts and then figuring out what are we actually going to turn into a movie or a TV show, if in the back of their minds they're thinking, you know, we need to lean into more character driven stories. We need to lean into stories that capture more universal human truths.

Natasha Hritzuk (08:23):

It just gives them like a filter or a lens rather than being, you know, constraining them, which, you know, clearly you don't want to do. The other thing that does work, because we're in a such a visual industry we're big ethnographers on my team, and we do, you know, for some of our studies, we'll do 51 hour interviews. And in those interviews there's so much nuance. There's so many interesting stories that our consumers are telling us that we'll often weave those into videos. And I think when our stakeholders ceased, and this is like, I think we all do this to some extent, but when they see humans, other humans telling them, you know, consumers telling them what they want, what they're you know, what makes them feel nurtured, what makes them feel engaged, it just adds that extra layer of validity. And in a visual driven world, you know, visuals, you know, a bar chart, <laugh>, you know, can be helpful. But, you know, if you can have videos or montage of people speaking and a and a narrative driven deck that captures attention and, and, you know, has the stakeholders leaning in that, that's always really important.

Ben Meyerson (09:30):

You were talking a little bit earlier, if I'm, if I may about before we began this conversation about a really fascinating story where a creator did want to hear some insights from a pretty, a pretty high profile person,

Natasha Hritzuk (09:42):

Ryan Coogler, who I personally am. I, I just think he's amazing. And I think everybody's aware that he won for the Oscar for best, best original screenplay. A lot of Oscars actually for that, for that production. It's an amazing movie, sinners. And like, he's this kind of wonder kid. He's young, he has this amazing track record such a humble guy and somebody who's that creative who comes up with something like sinners, you would think wouldn't have any appetite for research. And he did a town hall with like, with all of Warner Brothers Discovery and the research team. This was like our moment. He said, yeah, like you, you know, you have your narrative. You, you kind of know the story you want to tell, but that final polish is understanding, like, did we doll up the emotion too much? Did we, you know, did we run flat?

Natasha Hritzuk (10:31):

Do we need to amplify something? And he said, I really relied on research. He had said I had like, and he went, I had stacks of reports and then he called out the name of our head of theatrical research, Lewis. I did, I call out, shout out to Lewis. I had like, stacks of his research, but it helped him refine. So that's kind of like, I was talking more about research as an input, but he actually was using it to refine and shape the final product, which I think was fascinating and so heartening that this amazing creative was using research as a tool in his, in his process. So we all felt good about that. We were like, Lewis

Anna Estlund (11:09):

<Laugh>,

Natasha Hritzuk (11:10):

I, I can't help but think about you when I say these things. 'cause I imagine there's this thought bubble, like, we do this every day in CPG. It's like the lifeblood insights and form the end-to-end product process for you. So this probably sounds like this poor woman. This is like, she's so excited about something that's so organic to you,

Anna Estlund (11:29):

Natasha, we've, we've both worked in CPG and across different companies, I think Yes, in some CPG companies, but not all. So I've been across many and different brands and different teams. So while there is a good undercurrent for it, it can really depend on the team. And sometimes you have to push that thinking and see, like show the value of the work, and sometimes you just inherently get the pull. So it is a, it's not always, unfortunately there like

Natasha Hritzuk (11:55):

Everybody coming to you saying, look, what do we do next?

Anna Estlund (11:57):

What do we do next? You know, what does the consumer think? What do the real humans think? I mean, many times, yes, but sometimes you still have to push it. Okay,

Natasha Hritzuk (12:05):

That makes

Janelle James (12:05):

Close. I also love how insights can be a really nice input at any stage. The times where I've had the pleasure of working with partners in the entertainment industry, it's been really fascinating when it happens even another way, you know, a lot of their internal analytics and data will point to a certain audience and say, oh, we're seeing in our data that anything that works well with this audience seems to work well with every other audience. So let's learn more about this audience so we can fuel perspectives for our writers, or even our finance people, or, you know, whomever. So it's nice when the input can be the insights can be leveraged, you know, a number of ways. So I, I love what you shared,

Natasha Hritzuk (12:45):

But yeah, that is a good point. It makes me think about another study we did that a hundred percent validates what you've said, which is again, about that kind of scalable narrative that you can expand to a broader audience than maybe the one that you initially did the research with. Yeah. Yeah. Very good point. Yeah.

Ben Meyerson (13:01):

I'm going to jump off this a little bit and go to you, Anna now. So with the, with the alcohol industry, I mean, there's so much about occasions, obviously a lot of CPG companies do, but alcohol in particular, when you think about people, people imbibing. So there's relaxing at the end of the day, they're celebrating with friends, but how do you make sure that Pernod Ricard's brands meet people where they are?

Anna Estlund (13:22):

Yeah, occasions do matter. So let me start with some foundation and then get to the brand level. So as many CPG companies, you know, we have a foundational demand segmentation, which sounds fancy, but really it's just what are the human needs that are really true across drinking alcohol? And what are some of those more moments that matter, moments of consumption or conviviality underneath? So, you know, you can kind of picture a map, but the high level needs are things like treat and relax and celebrate and connect. And then underneath there's more specificity, like you said, like relaxing at home or celebrating at a bar. So what we know fundamentally in alcohol is context drives needs, drives choice. So your context for the occasion actually really matters. So this would be things like who you're with the time of day. So if I'm day drinking with friends, I probably have very different needs and choices than if I'm on like a first date and a dinner date and trying to impress somebody, right?

Anna Estlund (14:19):

So we have that foundation. Then you overlay, how do my brands play a role across those different moments or occasions? So my Jamison whiskey is much more of like a casual hang. My pert champagne is much more of a special occasion. So to get to the core of your question, then I think where the magic happens is when you really go deep on the human emotions and tensions within the occasion, and you connect it to what you were saying, like about the brand truth and the human truth. I think those two things need to come together. So I'll give you a quick example. Kahlua is a coffee liqueur of ours. It's in this relaxed moment. And so we've done ethnographies as well with consumers, and we're in their homes and we're doing drink-alongs. And we heard this tension that, you know, in these everyday moments, like I'm, I'm, I have a fear of trap being trapped and spending too much time in the grave of every day, and I want a bit more play.

Anna Estlund (15:16):

And we're like, this was an amazing tension and kind of insight to play with. So we did a campaign, it was kind of like, stir up your routine. It was okay. So we had to go back to the drawing board and back to consumers, back to real people and, and really explore more what's the brand role then that helps connect this to the human truth. So what we heard is Kua is delicious, but it's kind of decadent for every day. But people like our brand fans loved that about us. They actually loved that we were extra for every day and not basic. And so we're like, oh, that's what makes us special. Like, let's play and riff on that and led to this amazing campaign with Selma Hayek that's like super over the top telenovela style, like very dramatized at what people want in the occasion. And it's like hearing our espresso martini, and it's a, it's a campaign that is a platform that has so many good legs for us. It's been, you know, like pays back for us in marketing mix and drives cases that won an Ogilvy award for the insights behind the ad. So to me, you've got to, you really do have to have that human depth and emotion and tension and really understand how to connect it with your brand to make it special.

Ben Meyerson (16:28):

I'm going to drill in a little bit there on how you got from that first draft of a plan to the, to the next level where you took it from an everyday okay campaign to one that ended up winning a bunch of Ville awards and really elevating your brand. I mean, so what were some insights? Where, where did the humans come into that, that you found that particular insight?

Anna Estlund (16:48):

Well, look, the demand segmentation is a bunch of humans. So like, while it's quant data, there's a ton of humans that go into that. And especially in our big brands, big occasions, you know, we, we had some base foundation along the way of, of like mock ethnography or moments of conviviality ethnographies to really kind of understand what's going on in the moment, since we were in a creative development moment with Kua, we went a step further and said, okay, we are going to go in people's homes, do drink alongs. And we were talking to a lot of couples as well, since that was kind of the moment in the surround of the occasion. So that's what led us to the first human insight part. But then, you know, human learning along the way on that first campaign that wasn't great is also what told us it wasn't great.

Anna Estlund (17:31):

I would say we kind of knew in our gut that it could be better and more breakthrough, but also had the human input to say, oh, this is testing is average more or less. Right? And so we went back and we're like, we have the, we, we feel confident about the core of the idea, but we think it can be sharper and more breakthrough and more entertaining and all of that. So then it was another round of let's go talk to people and see what they think about us. So it, it truly is a mix of qual and quant and depth and scale, you know, all of those things that really got us there along the way. But it was a journey. It's not like we like nailed it and hit it out of the park. It's day one, we didn't Yeah.

Natasha Hritzuk (18:10):

But you, I think Ray is something that I think gets forgotten. I think people just sort of see research who are not in the field as focus groups and surveys. <Laugh> Yes. I it drives me nuts. Yeah. And it's, it's a very kind of, it's an oversimplification of what we do. And what you're talking about is that to get to that end point, you had to use a wide variety of different tools, different approaches, and it was kind of knitting all that together that took you to the end point.

Anna Estlund (18:34):

Absolutely.

Natasha Hritzuk (18:36):

Absolutely. And part of it is the art of research design, which is also a very human thing. You know, kind of understanding, okay, we didn't get this, but then what do we, you know, do we go back to the drawing board? Is it more quant? Is it more ethnography?

Anna Estlund (18:47):

How do you ask the question to get depth? Right? Yes. Like that's the art of a good moderator. Yeah, I've done AI moderators for sure, but it's like, yeah, it's for good basic foundation, but to really get to human depth, you need somebody that's really skilled on extracting that from somebody mm-hmm <affirmative>. Or observing and reading between the lines. Yeah.

Janelle James (19:03):

And just connecting with people, right? Yes. Like you can't really connect with the robot, you can connect with the person and they can really be stimulus for the conversation as well. Absolutely. So that's wonderful.

Natasha Hritzuk (19:12):

Yeah. I think we like to really dig into kind of what, you know, I mean, you're going beyond occasion. You've kind of hit on this insight and you need to go deeper into the insight. Yeah. Which is very instinctual. And I think, you know, there's a place I think for AI moderators in a certain capacity, but instinct is a human gift.

Anna Estlund (19:33):

And

Natasha Hritzuk (19:33):

That that's, you guys were to some extent operating with your instinct that you could dig deeper. So

Anna Estlund (19:38):

Absolutely. I think that's so important.

Janelle James (19:41):

Absolutely.

Ben Meyerson (19:41):

Yeah. Combining instinct with insights takes it to the next level.

Janelle James (19:44):

Like that instinct, intuition, tension, these are all, you know, uniquely human things mm-hmm. That help us create meaning. So

Anna Estlund (19:51):

The aspiration versus the reality too, right? Like that's where you always dig in to deep tensions and insights and, and you know, what is the unmet need is, is hard to get with an AI moderator.

Janelle James (20:03):

Yeah. Yeah. And I love that in both of, you know, and what both of you shared, like even the research methods, everything is about centering people and really understanding the different experiences that we all navigate, so mm-hmm. Kudos to you.

Natasha Hritzuk (20:17):

Yeah. And you brought this up even, you know, in your intro, Janelle, that, I mean, surveys are important. You know, quanta is important. It helps you understand the scale of what you're, you're learning how, how, how broad can these insights be applied. Nuances can get teased out as well. But I think, you know, I'm, I'm just a huge qual fan because that's where you uncover the messiness that you know, you brought up in, in, you know, the real life. I mean, humans are messy. There are instances where, you know, things don't get expressed explicitly right off the bat that you have to kind of dig around or maybe even just discern it from the narrative. Like I think ethnography and qual are so important in getting that depth of understanding and taking the time to actually care and understand. Yeah.

Janelle James (21:01):

And, and we change our minds too, right? Yeah. We're not, we're not super predictable. You know, you raised a really interesting point about AI moderation and sort of like the best place for it. And I've found oftentimes the best place for it is to enhance quant. Because so many times we have open ends in quant, and now we can do that at scale in a more interactive way and not necessarily use it to replace qual where we want that human interaction and perspective and everything.

Natasha Hritzuk (21:30):

I think people forget, and we don't have to take this in an AI direction at all, but it's just, it is at that point of inflection between real human and then, you know, this sort of AI's mimicking humans. But the fact is AI is machine learning, but much more effective machine learning. And it's still, you know, as machine learning was, was kind of you know, at the core of machine learning, it's about working with historical data, And we kind of like, we didn't even like full stop. Like that immediately flags up potential, but also limitations mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Janelle James (22:03):

Because it's backwards looking.

Natasha Hritzuk (22:04):

Exactly. Yeah.

Anna Estlund (22:05):

There is data, like there's human data behind data, sales, data shopper data survey data, like that still is a human voice. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. Even synthetic data has human data behind it, to your point, or a human prompt and input to get there. It's just, it has its limitations to the point. Yeah. So how do you balance it and use it with other tools to get you there faster, is how I think about it, but not exclusively.

Natasha Hritzuk (22:29):

Yeah. And not as a substitute for human, but humans, but more of a tool or an accelerator. Yeah.

Janelle James (22:36):

Yeah.

Ben Meyerson (22:37):

I want to jump off this with a question I have for Janelle here actually talking about ai. So Janelle, you recently wrote an article for Fast Company talking about how some companies may be driving away their best customers with an over-reliance on ai. How can brands modernize their products while still making them feel human?

Janelle James (22:53):

No, thank you for this question. I appreciate it for a number of reasons. One, because that, you know, article was both a personal and a professional achievement. But the title is, you know, is AI Driving Away Your Best Customers? And at the core of the piece, it really centers on universal design. You know, when you focus on the customers with the most constraints, you end up designing something that works for everyone. And what it does, I think quite well is outline instances where in a customer journey that's fueled with ai, it lacks sort of situational intelligence, that context that you've been referencing. And so they could be some really interesting mishaps that frustrate customers out of wanting to be you know, connected to the brand. And so it really is a reminder that we can design and center humans, but oftentimes when we focus the people with the most constraints, which are often growth audiences will succeed. Because they often get experience the failures of average design fastest first. And most often. So they're kind of like the canaries in the coal mine when we're thinking about designing universally. So the, the trick is really to focus on people, focus on real people real problems. And that's how we can ensure that everything from advertising to products to policy really is human and works for real people.

Ben Meyerson (24:22):

Janelle, I'm going to jump off this because you spent a lot of time with our qualitative team here in SSOs among working with all the different folks all around the company. Yeah. And one of the things that they talk about, or that the qualitative folks have talked about is the vibrant fringes. How you build better products by looking at the outsides of society, not society, but of the less, less reached folks that are out there. Yeah,

Janelle James (24:45):

No, I love that. And it's exactly one of the key points in the article that when you focus on the vibrant fringes or the underserved underrepresented audiences, you end up creating better products because they are navigating systems experiences that weren't created for them. They were created for the average. What's interesting in this moment is there are a number of growth audiences who are underserved and underrepresented, but also the fastest growing, right. People, 65 plus people of color, people who are lower income. And so when we start designing for intersections of these group, we, we end up with stronger products that end up being more human. But they're the vibrant fringes 'cause they have the most perspective for how we can improve.

Ben Meyerson (25:31):

Yeah. And sometimes they're not, they don't necessarily show up in that quant data. Like you, if you have to drill deep with that, with that qual perspective.

Janelle James (25:38):

And Yes. Particularly because oftentimes quant looks at variables in a very singular way. And so it's in the intersections, the messiness of life, <laugh>, when you're looking at multiple communities and multiple experiences and how they intersect, you get that richness and so you can more easily explore them with qualitative. I think with ai we have a little bit more muscle that we can figure some things out quantitatively as well mm-hmm <affirmative>. But qualitative allows you to sort of explore unencumbered <laugh>,

Natasha Hritzuk (26:10):

I mean the point that you make about the mean, I mean, and that's kind of the nature of what you're doing with quant, which again has its rule, but you're understanding, you know, you, you want to scale to some extent means how do we hit that average and we'll kind of, you know, when you think about the bell curve, the average captures, you know Yeah. In the minds of, I think a lot of us, the majority. But the problem is that's assuming that the majority doesn't shift. That the majority isn't changing in composition. Exactly. So,

Janelle James (26:37):

And when we look at the average, sometimes it's a, it's just a mathematical number that doesn't reflect a real experience.

Natasha Hritzuk (26:42):

Exactly. Yeah. And all those interesting deviations Yes. Once you keep moving further and further away,

Janelle James (26:47):

Which make us so human. Yeah,

Natasha Hritzuk (26:49):

Yeah.

Janelle James (26:50):

Because

Natasha Hritzuk (26:50):

None of us are average

Janelle James (26:51):

<Laugh>. Exactly. Americans are not average <laugh>

Anna Estlund (26:54):

In both of our worlds, though that you have the balance right. Of those broad things and the very bullseye things. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. So it's like the, the broad superhero movies reach a very broad audience. And your sinners also won an Oscar by being very specific mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yes. And culturally relevant to something like, you know, a really true, interesting story in my world in CPG too. Right. It's like you can have a very broadly appealing strawberry yogurt and you can have something that's like dairy free and appeals to a more specific audience and still can be a blockbuster product. Right. There can be a role for both, but you have to really explore and understand what you're trying to do as well.

Natasha Hritzuk (27:33):

And yeah, it's true. If you go too much for scale you can also end up, and I think this, you know, you can tell me if this is the kind of core point you were trying to make. The more you go for scaling, the more you hit average, the more you start to strip whatever you're creating it, it becomes kind of boring. Yeah. It becomes kind of vanilla. Yeah. All of the nuances, the dynamics, the things that make it interesting and compelling get stripped away. Yeah. I was thinking like a show like Euphoria, which is for certain not a mainstream show, and it's very much in a world, by the way, where young adults are deeply, deeply underserved. And we're finding that time and again, they just have no shows to watch. So they keep going back and watching stuff from the past. It's hilarious. Like, why are they watching Vampire Diaries? Because there's nothing that's contemporary that's of interest to them. But when you keep trying to hit that broad audience, significant groups like youth, I mean, if we're not making things for youth for younger people, for Zs, at some point they're going to become mainstream. You know, they're going to become adults and you have an onboarded them. And so it's true. Like even though you think of them as the fringe, they could become and very lucky will become, have the potential, become a critical audience.

Janelle James (28:42):

And what I find really fascinating about Gen Z in particular is that every group that is underrepresented in the overall population is overrepresented in Gen Z. Yeah. So that's why in many ways they feel unpredictable when you're just looking at the data and you don't necessarily have that perspective or that lens because they're in many ways just pushing up against everything. Right. They tend to be activists and be more purpose oriented. But a lot of that is because they're, you know, 86, I think they have 86% less purchasing power than boomers did at the same age <laugh>. So they're, so they're, you know, the financial anxiety is really present. There's so many things about them that make them really

Anna Estlund (29:21):

Well that's, that's another place where the human voice matters so much is almost myth busting people's assumptions. [Natasha: Oh my god. Big time. Right?] Like, I think, you know, of many people in the workplace are not Gen Z, at least my company. So they have some assumptions of what's important to Gen Z. And so we've done a lot of work there and like really understanding their path to purchase and have had like really good myth busters, like, oh, they actually like, are looking for all of these little micro validations from people. And so they'll be like, literally, because we did human research and had people in the aisles like shopping for alcohol, they're literally like, you know, looking on their phone, calling their friend, asking staff about, 'cause they're just not as familiar with the category yet. And so all of that understanding for us was really helpful to then bring to our leadership to say, oh, it's not that they only shop online, don't like shopping in the store, don't want to talk to people. No. They actually like, need a little bit of help in education and some like basics that we take for granted because we know, you know, about an Negroni or a gin and tonic or whatever,

Natasha Hritzuk (30:19):

You know, we've done, we've done the same thing with cs, no attention span, turning away from tv, don't want to watch movies. But then we'd see all these curious things like yeah. But they're going back and watching Gilmore Girls, they're watching, they're watching stuff that's 20 years old. You heard all about suits, you heard all about friends. Yeah. Well, if they don't want to watch tv, why are they going back and watching stuff that's palpably old and not of their generation? And what we found is that that that was driven by a profound risk aversion. So we did this again, a lot of qualitative research, a lot of ethnography. And we found this fascinating thing that none of us knew about Z's because we're all predominantly older millennials or exes mm-hmm <affirmative>. And they basically said when they're not on short form you know, after they've done their whole short form thing all day, they've been on TikTok, they've been on YouTube.

Natasha Hritzuk (31:11):

When evening comes, they want to really invest, they use the word invest a lot. They really wanted to invest in content that would absorb their time and get them kind of caught up in whatever it is that they're viewing. And so they really want to be able to sink their teeth into something. They anticipate it, there's a lot of emotional energy behind that choice. And when they go to watch something and it's a limited series, we can't sink your teeth into something with five episodes. So that was a source of frustration. It ended too quickly. Yeah. Like, they want to watch the binge watching. Well, the binge watching is part of that because once you sink your teeth in, it's like chocolates. You eat two, you want three, you want five. You know, so they wanted this longitudinal experience, but the library content was about risk aversion.

Natasha Hritzuk (31:53):

The last thing you want to do is carve out that time, start watching something net new and it's horrible. And then you've gotten, you've set aside the time, you've built up the anticipation and it's like an aborted journey. So they were going back to older shows that one had multiple seasons, so they knew there'd be that, you know, two to three month viewing session that they could, you know, watch it over the course of a longer period of time. But if it stood the test of time, if it had been around for 20, 30 years, and if there were multiple seasons, by definition, it had to be good. Yeah. So we had this like, a big insight was, wow, these guys are risk adverse. They need cues and information that help them. Yes. Kind of like what you were saying.

Anna Estlund (32:35):

Yes, absolutely.

Natasha Hritzuk (32:36):

Did we make the right decision? Did

Anna Estlund (32:37):

You make the right choice? Yep. Am I going to, you know, in your world different, but in my world it's like, am I making the right choice that also is socially acceptable Yeah. That my friends might like. Yeah. You know, so like,

Natasha Hritzuk (32:46):

Not show up with the crappy drink where everyone's like, who brought this

Anna Estlund (32:49):

Exactly. Who brought this cheap thing? Yeah.

Natasha Hritzuk (32:51):

But it is about, I mean, fear of making the wrong choice. Absolutely. Which is such an eternally youthful thing, <laugh>, because you don't always have the confidence at that point. But we kind of forgot that. Like, okay, so there's z okay, they grew up in the digital age, but they're still kids. Yeah. They still need the assurances, they need their confidence boosted, they need information to, you know, help facilitate their choices. They still

Anna Estlund (33:13):

Are balancing that like assurance of something that's comfortable and stable with the prospect of something new and exciting. Yeah. That's like an evergreen human tension at that age. Right? Yeah. And it just, just because technology is there doesn't mean that goes away. It just looks different.

Natasha Hritzuk (33:26):

And maybe technology makes it worse because there's, they're, they're almost, there's

Anna Estlund (33:30):

So much choice. There's too much choice. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Meyerson (33:33):

I love that it's going so deep on the kids. We got to figure out what's going on there. But I mean, it sounds like you've done the research and you've figured it out. I mean, getting across that threshold is really important.

Janelle James (33:41):

I love it. Also, because my daughter isn't z, she's, oh, she's Alpha. She's alpha. But it's so interesting to your point, all day long or as much as she can, she's, you know, looking at short form content on, you know, YouTube kids. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. But after dinner she wants couch time with Mom

Natasha Hritzuk (33:57):

Ewing,

Janelle James (33:58):

It's huge with El Alpha. Yes. She cute. She wants Couch time with Mom. It's so cute. And she's wants to watch, we started out with Cozy tv, so she got into a lot of older sitcoms, but Frazier, which is like, blows my mind. So we'll either watch Fraser Frazier, golden Girls, or a Different World and literally two to three episodes a night. That's

Ben Meyerson (34:15):

Wonderful. Alright, I think we have time for a couple of questions from our audience here. Let's see. Alright, I think I'm going to throw this one to Natasha and Anna. So for both of you you've talked a lot about tailoring things and meeting people where they are, but both of your companies also create things that you hope will have wide appeal. Has it been harder to hit that wide appeal mark lately?

Anna Estlund (34:43):

Oh yeah. I think in, we're in a world where you have to balance consistency and customization. So as a, a brand, you want to build an enduring equity and a lasting legacy and have people know you and your distinctive assets, but you can still be really tailored right. To a certain audience. So to me, you're kind of always balancing that, like bullseye relevance, some of the things we were talking about with broad reach and especially in a CPG company that's, you know, expects a lot from a sales standpoint. It's, it's hard to wrestle with. So I think there are, there are like principles I think you can use. Like to me, there's, you have to really think about your brand truth and tone of voice and the more stable things about your brand that shouldn't change over time, regardless of who you're talking to or where you are.

Anna Estlund (35:37):

But then your target, you can, you know, show up a little bit differently for people. So for example, Malibu, which is a rum brand of ours Malibu's fundamentally its truth is vacation vibes. We're like a party in a bottle or a can we have canned cocktails too. That's just who we are. And our tone of voice is, you know, a little bit cheeky, a little bit mischievous. So that doesn't change. But we have different targets. So if I'm talking to my millennial mom or my college student, gen Z or my Latina party host, like we can show up a bit differently in the touch points. We have the cocktail recommendations, we have the, you know, a bit on the messaging, but we're still always going to stay true to who we are. So those things are so important and you have to then take a, a step back and look at it in totality.

Anna Estlund (36:27):

So I think even now in a world where we have a lot of little that we can do as a brand, meaning you can reach a lot of people but in really targeted ways with a lot of little messages Right? Or a lot of touch points. We, you have to take a step back and say, all of my actions together, are they adding up to something that can truly grow equity in sales? Because we have so many different activities out there, especially in our big brands. I've literally had my team sit in a room for Jameson, our biggest brand holiday, our biggest season, and like map out what the consumer experience could have been like, everything they could have seen from you in that period. It's like thousands of messages. So you have to do a gut check, like, does the brand world look the same in all the places we're showing up? Is the main message I want to get across working is it all adding up to something that can grow household penetration and, and drive sales for me? And that it's not just a media exercise on reach, it's like truly you have to think of all of your activities end to end because you can be so bullseye, which is amazing, but you still have to make sure that it's going to add up to something that can grow the business. And that's the tension. It's not easy.

Natasha Hritzuk (37:42):

No. Especially with, you know, all the, it's just like this, the, the, this is kind, I think kind of something that harkens back to what we talked about earlier, which is this tension between a very human tension between personal, the personal or the personal personalization, I guess in our language and the collective. And we all want to be part of something, but we also want things tailored to us. Mm-Hmm. And that's like a perennial, a perennial tension that's probably been around forever. And I think in the movie industry, our product is every individual title that we produce. So what we have to do is look at the end-to-end portfolio across all the different arms of the business. And so we call it content mix. And so you definitely have to have scalable stuff, but then you also want to have some audience specific content, which if you are covering the right audiences and you're catering to the right audiences, you'll again almost cover the normal curve, which is another element of scale.

Natasha Hritzuk (38:39):

You have the stuff that's going to always go straight to the middle. You know, DC would be a great example, Superman, which is meant to be, you know, content that has broad consumption. A show like Abbott Elementary, a show like Big Bang, you know, speaking more historically, you're very deliberately hitting at a scaled audience. But you also want to make sure that as part of your portfolio, you have you know, coverage of coverage of the, you know, what you were calling the, the vibrant fringes. The vibrant fringes, because they, that's part of scaling is making sure that you're also covering some of the, you know, unique or smaller audiences. So it, it's complicated, but I think it's more kind of the way that we think about portfolio managing management at, at a, at a kind of macro level.

Natasha Hritzuk (39:26):

And so different studios will produce content that is DC scale, Harry Potter Scale, the franchises are scaled, but then you have a 24, which is definitely more of an indie film unit that's producing more specific targeted content. And so it kind of balances out HBO content again, is not always meant to be scaled, it's more adult, it's tends to be a little more edgy. It may not appeal to conservative audiences, but then you have WBTV content, which does tend to have that more broader mass appeal. So some of it is kind of addressed by the studios. But, you know, we have people who actively model the portfolio. And looking, you know, you're looking at, you know, even if you've got five smaller titles, do those four or five smaller titles, which are probably a little cheaper to produce, are they measuring up to the equivalent of what maybe three smaller titles? Five would be too expensive measuring up to, you know, a bigger, a bigger kind of box office kind of tentpole production. So it's a little bit funny in the world of content because, you know, these aren't, they're enduring things, but it's each one is kind of a, an ephemeral product at a moment in time.

Anna Estlund (40:40):

We're both talking about the idea of bullseye relevance Yeah. And broad reach and the balance.

Natasha Hritzuk (40:45):

Yeah. And that balance, like figuring out, it's the balance. You can't go too far in one direction. You can't go too far with Yes. Ignoring the nuances and some of the specific needs of specific,

Anna Estlund (40:53):

The human learning I think usually starts with the bullseye relevance. Yeah. So then you have to figure out how you can get broad reach. Yeah. You know, but you got to start with the bullseye relevance, I think.

Natasha Hritzuk (41:03):

Yeah. And I actually think one of the things that did happen a little bit in the world of TV and movies is they went a little bit long tail. And so now I think there's a little bit of and streaming definitely led to that because there was a need for high volumes of content and the more content you need to produce, it gets a little niche-y, it gets a little, yeah. But then it also gets overwhelming and you're you, you make it harder for people to find something that's going to be right for them. And you're, you start to lose, you start to go too far to the extremes and you start to lose out on that kind of bigger, broader appeal content.

Ben Meyerson (41:40):

Natasha, I actually want to follow up on this. We had another question for you here about how about with streaming services, you now have more human data than ever. Yeah. So how does that change the way you see the role of insights when you can see what every single person who subscribes to HBO Max is

Natasha Hritzuk (41:56):

Watching? I mean, I don't actually work with that data, so it's funny, I, I think in entertainment, I can't speak to all the companies. I can speak to a few of the studios where I, I basically, you know, know the people who work there. Data science still sits separate from insights. Which I don't, my, this is my personal perspective, I don't always think it serves the stakeholders well. You know, the magic is that the intersection, which I think a lot of insights people have known for a long time, data science is about, you know, it's got a lot of the qualities that we've discussed with ai. It's looking backwards. It's you know, data scientists are brilliant, but they're mathematicians. So, you know, they are looking for numerical connections that sometimes don't make sense without context. So I'll give you sort of an interesting example.

Natasha Hritzuk (42:49):

When I was on HBO Max our, and we were part of the launch team, so it's kind of, you know, it was our first consumer product because we weren't a direct to consumer business until we started launching, you know, these, these streaming apps. And our general manager at the time said, who should we be targeting <laugh>? I mean, it seems like such a basic question, but you know, you're launching, you, you already have the content, you're launching a technology platform. So we did there was this kind of race between data science and race between insights to do a segmentation and the data science segmentation was, they were effectively, you know, what we're collecting is what people watched. So you can already see, Ooh, that might be a little fraught. When you create clusters out of what people watch, you get clusters, like movie viewers, game of Thrones viewers, mums who like drama. And you're like, and so the marketing team got them. They're like, we don't know what to do with these. Are they mutually exclusive? What's mm-hmm <affirmative>. So we

Janelle James (43:46):

And how do they anticipate the data from when they're not watching on platform? Exactly.

Natasha Hritzuk (43:50):

Exactly. It's not,

Janelle James (43:52):

It's not the whole person,

Natasha Hritzuk (43:53):

It's, it's a walled garden view. Yeah. So we created a segmentation that was based on people's relationship to content and that it was a us viewing segmentation. We actually just redid it so that we could have a cross enterprise view as well as be able to look outside of our world as well. But anyway, long story short, the minute you fold in people's relationship to content, it's like I'm a connoisseur and I, you know, love old films and so I, you know, go deep into the lore and know everything about every director actress compared to a zeitgeist. What's hot, rwhat's new, what's everybody talking about? You think about, you know, if you're a marketer and someone's like, well these are Game of Thrones lovers. Okay, <laugh> <laugh>, so we'll like, send them an email when the next season's coming out. Versus these are zeitgeists, like the minute this hits a certain level of you know, sort of social media chatter, they're going to, they get FOMO.

Natasha Hritzuk (44:46):

They have to be a part of it. These are people who are creatures of habit. They have a much more passive relationship to content. Like it brings the segments to life. So I think data, again, is helpful at understanding behavioral clusters. Great for targeting, you know, they're very discreet use cases. But I think without that understanding of the human, who are these guys and why are they watching content and how do we find them? How do we market to them? What's that sweet spot that we can tap into you, you do need Yeah. The insights for that. The meaning.

Ben Meyerson (45:20):

<Affirmative>. Lots to consider. Yeah. Alright, well I think we are at time. So thank you all so much for joining us today. This is what a great conversation. Thank you. I think we could have gone on for another hour. Yeah. <Laugh>.

Natasha Hritzuk (45:30):

Maybe we did in fact, <laugh>.

Ben Meyerson (45:34):

Oh. But thank you so much for coming. Really enjoyed.

Natasha Hritzuk (45:36):

Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

Ben Meyerson (45:38):

Thank you. Yeah. And thank you all for joining us. If you haven't yet, you really should read our companion report, real Reality, which focuses on great fresh data on what your brand can gain by talking more to real people. And in just two weeks, make sure you come back to explore more ways to reach modern Audiences with the new issue of our award-winning magazine. What the future focused on the future of Attention. I'm Ben Myerson and this is Insights to Activate with Ipsos.