David Boyle TMRE intro 2023

Thank you so much and welcome to day two of tmre. We have a jam packed agenda for you and some really important things to talk about, to be inspired by, to be challenged by as well. First of all, thank you so much to the amazing Oksana for kicking yesterday off. God, I love her energy, her passion, her perspective on our industry. What a great way to kick the event off. Unfortunately, of course, I wasn't here yesterday. I escaped TMRE along with 50 of our insight leaders for an executive retreat. A really weird art museum. Meow Wolf in Denver. Yay. What a fun day we had. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we learned as part of my opening this morning as well. And of course, that came hot off the back of Sunday, the AI Summit that we held here. Who was part of the AI Summit on Sunday? Yay. That is good AI energy right there. Thank you. Jam packed two days for me. And of course you had all day here at tmre, most of you. And we've still got two full days to go. Wow. Let me do some housekeeping first and then I'm going to set the day up, set the tone, recap some of what we've learned the last couple of days and welcome our first speakers. Yay on housekeeping. First of all, if you haven't got the app, please download connect me. It's awesome. The Q and A that you're going to put into there will help us on stage right here. It'll help in the track sessions, it'll help us all learn. The feedback that you give to speakers will help them to learn, but will also help us to put a better show on for you next year. You can use it for networking, working out the agenda, all sorts of things, and also you can use it to earn some prizes. Cue the prize winners slide. Congratulations to Ashley and Danielle for winning yesterday's prizes. Are you in the audience, Ashley? Danielle? No. You don't know you've won yet. They scanned so many badges barcodes stalls in the exhibit hall yesterday. Well done. You deserve the prize for the networking, the connections that you made. Of course, the biggest prize is the networking and the connections you made by scanning all those codes. But the prize will help as well. Go collect your prize at registration later in the day. Right, let's talk about what's new at TMRE this year, shall we? It's changing every year, much like our industry. We have the first ever AI carousel, rapid fire fun demos of AI powered insight products. In the exhibit hall. There was one yesterday and it's running again today during the networking break in the exhibit hall. If you haven't already experienced it, go check out some of those fantastic tools in action. Quick Fire Fun. We've got client side coffee chats at 12:25, a great chance to meet other client side researchers. I'm going to say this again and again, but the networking and the connections that you make this week are going to be the thing that sticks with you for the longest. So go meet other client side researchers, network, build relationships. Also share and learn might challenge them as well. You should be signing up now for some of the day three workshops for tomorrow. There's Consumer Insight Leadership and one storytelling masterclass as well. They both seem awesome. Not sure which one I'm gonna go to yet. They come with a certification so proof to your boss that you got value out of tmre. And then day three, we got lunch and learns to end with a bit of a bang. We've got one on insight with impact and one on doing insight work with underrepresented communities. Again, I'm not sure which one I want to go to. Maybe both. We'll see. But sign up in the app and have fun. Great way to end the event with some great people just talking about important topics. Yay. Keep the ideas coming for what you want to see on the agenda for next year as well. Let me set the scene for a minute before I introduce our first speaker about why we're here and what's going on in the industry and some of the conversations that we've had in the last couple of days. As we stand here under the backdrop of the majestic Rocky Mountains, we're reminded that just as they stood the test of time and evolved, so we must be resilient and evolve in our careers as market researchers. ChatGPT wrote that opening line for me. I thought it was pretty good. I wrote most of the rest, I promise. But seriously, we have to evolve. We have to evolve as market researchers and also be proud and resilient about our strengths even in this period of incredible, incredible rapid change. Yes, that's something we say every year because it's true. Every year it's more true than ever. AI is weird and wonderful and magnificent in ways that none of us expected. This time last year, three of the talks at TMRE last year, three of of 112 talks mentioned AI in the title. I told you, none of us saw this coming. This year, 31 talks. Nearly a quarter mention it in the title, but almost all of them I'm sure cover it as part of the content. That is rapid change. I shared in the AI day examples of where I've taken a client's paid survey based market research based audience segmentation and without looking at it, I've used ChatGPT to get almost all the way there for free in one hour. Let that sink in. I shared an example with one of the biggest consumer goods companies in the world. Actually I've done this with two now where we take unmet audience needs, audience segments and product innovation in ChatGPT alone with no proprietary knowledge and we come up with product innovations which out test product innovations. The Insight team came up with using traditional innovation processes in ChatGPT in one hour for free. Let that sink in. We are in the period of rapid but profound transformation, revolution and challenge in our industries. AI allows us to do more, which is good because we're all under pressure to do more for our businesses with fewer resources. Do you feel that? Big topic yesterday. Budgets are being constrained, but in a world that's changing faster than it ever has before, we're being asked to do more as well. That's an incredible challenge. Look for people and friends and partners who can help you navigate that over the next two days and definitely embrace AI to help you solve that. Another challenge that keeps coming up is the need to prove value to our businesses. We talked about this on the main stage last year. To not be seen as cost centers, but to be seen as profit drivers. We talked a lot yesterday about being consultants, about being strategists, about influencing strategy and business decision making. It's on the agenda in lots of places. But again, seek out people who are sharing that struggle, who have solved that problem and get their help going forward and how you tackle this in your business. But even in a world of AI, one of the most exciting conclusions for me is that it's never been more important to be human. We are more important than we've ever been. I've spent my last year since ChatGPT came out, so slightly less than a year immersing myself in the world of AI and how it can help us to do our jobs. And my biggest conclusion, which matches the conversation from people on AI Day on Sunday, which matches the results from careful academic studies in this area, is that AI will augment us, it will help us, it will give us a superpower. It won't replace us. There is what's now a common phrase, AI won't replace us. Somebody using AI will. That's definitely true, but that's Only a problem if you don't embrace new technologies. If you do, it's a superpower. It's very clear that the best people at their craft can use AI to outperform mediocre people at their craft. It's true in so many crafts, true in ours. So being a great market researcher has never been more important. AI is called the great leveler by some people of skills. I think it's the great narrower of skills because the best people will still be the best when they use AI. They'll still outperform. So work on those core skills. They've never been more important. And qualitative insights is getting a real boost out of AI. I talked on Sunday about how I've often neglected qualitative insights. If I'm honest, little bit expensive, little bit slow. Not anymore. Not anymore in the world of AI. So qualitative researchers who can really engage consumers to have those authentic conversations and generate qualitative insight are more important than ever. And that human touch is going to be used by more people in more brands. That's incredibly exciting and empowering for our industry. If you're looking for help on language models, I can't recommend Prompt MBA enough. What a great book. I'm not trying to sell my book. If you for any reason can't afford a copy or don't feel like you can, just message me and I'll send you one. No problems. We've got to be helping each other through this incredibly difficult revolution of transformation. That's the purpose of this event. The theme to come back to it then, is revolution is here. Make change your superpower. Who worked hard on that tagline for the event, and I'm really proud of it. It's absolutely right. Make change your superpower, I think, is not a suggestion. It's a definite recommendation. Because if you don't make change your superpower, if you don't learn to embrace, ride, leverage, change to help you, more so than ever before, you're going to be in trouble. But revolution is exciting. It's a brave new world. It's new opportunities and new, I mean, this word, superpowers. It feels like a superpower when you use these new tools. And today's keynotes are designed to help you with exactly that theme. We're going to talk about the intersection of technology and life. We're going to talk about how tech can complement humans, not override them. And we're going to take a deep dive into the human brain and its intricacies. We're going to think about what that means for behavior, what that means for decision making, what that means for creativity, things that are critical, human skills in a world of AI. These skills will help you understand audiences for your brands. They'll help you understand your decision makers that you're trying to influence every single day. And they'll help you understand yourselves. So revolution, absolutely, definitely is here. We need to be excited about it, we need to embrace it, and we need to champion change in this industry. Don't see this as a challenge. Please see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to redefine what market research means, to reimagine what market research means, and to revolutionize market research. That is what we must do this this week. Yay.