Insights from the Metaverse 2023

Valerie Bounds, Chief Strategy and Creative Officer, Aurora Agency
Valerie is the Chief Strategy & Creative Officer and Co-Founder of female-led creative experience agency, Aurora.
A veteran of the digital industry, Valerie started working in digital in the year Google launched and has been leading creative and digital strategy for global brands over the past 25 years.  Cutting her teeth in UX and copywriting roles at Ogilvy and other WPP agencies in London she won awards early on for her groundbreaking UX work on Nestle brands, Royal Mail, Deloitte and Ford. Moving to an independent agency Valerie delivered the first iteration of the ASOS brand and website, and worked across The Who's Pete Townshend websites which were focussed on elevating new artists. She developed the first website for cult TV series, Red Dwarf including 3D modelling Starbug. Having relocated Valerie then worked at leading North West agencies including Code Computerlove and True North later launching her own consultancies. She also spent time client side heading digital strategy for Bank Of America's European brands.
Returning to agency life Valerie headed digital for boutique brand agency, Music, where she led digital strategy & development projects for Universal Music, The British Fashion Council, The Christie NHS Trust and The Liverpool Philharmonic.
Prior to co-founding Aurora, Valerie spent five years heading up digital at Liverpool integrated agency, Uniform, developing their digital offer. Increasingly this involved fully integrated digital and CX strategies encompassing immersive technology, working on the foundations of web 3.0 strategies for clients such as Canary Wharf and MCFC.
A huge advocate for tech innovation, Valerie is driving Aurora's Web 3.0 offer which helps clients devise strategies to navigate the ever blurring lines of digital and physical convergence. Recent work includes a major piece of research looking at how to reengage Gen Z and Alpha with The Official Charts, and NFT & Metaverse strategies for a global Couture fashion house, influencer platform and a major gaming marketplace.
Profiled as one of The Drum’s ‘World’s Most Creative Women’, Valerie has been a judge for awards including the BIMAs and DADIs. She is a STEM ambassador and passionate advocate for women in technology.

Jehangir Byramji, Senior Innovation Lead - Emerging Technology, Lloyds Banking Group
Jehangir leads a team with a remit to explore and experiment with emerging technologies that have the ability to drive business model innovation at Lloyds Banking Group. He previously developed LBG’s relationships with fintech accelerator programmes and early stage ventures. 
Jehangir is a business builder with a background in strategy and innovation both in consultancy and in-house. Jehangir moved into corporate innovation, where he is recognised as a thought leader who brings innovative solutions to life by applying strategic, evidence-based approaches - designing and running experiments and pilots to learn first-hand, reduce business risk and accelerate speed to market. Prior roles include Corporate Partner at StartupBootcamp and strategy consulting at Deloitte; he is also Vice chair of governors at Chestnut Grove Academy and a mentor to start-ups and social enterprises.

Julie Corney, Standards and Compliance Manager, MRS
Julie is the MRS Standards & Compliance Manager.  Julie is the lead on the MRS Codeline Advisory Service, the essential ‘hotline’ on professional standards when conducting research.  Julie delivers regular briefings to MRS Company Partners on standards, legislation, and best practice.  Julie also delivers training to MRS members and staff on data protection legislation and drafts revisions to the MRS Code of Conduct and supplementary guidance.
In addition, Julie handles complaints against MRS members and Company Partners and facilitates three investigations committees and the Market Research Standards Board (MRSB). Julie is a certified Mental Health First Aider and author of the MRS Essential Safeguards series of guidance.

Anja Domres, Head of Customer Research, eBay
Anja is Head of Research at eBay, and leads qualitative and quantitative research projects to enable insight led brand and business decisions both on a strategic and on an operational level. 
Prior to eBay she enabled over 10 Allianz entities globally to apply the Net Promoter system and other customer focus tools and established global customer experience standards.
As a change agent for customer centricity, she constantly evolves the ways to create customer empathy and started to leverage Virtual Reality to get to the next level of customer immersion. 
Anja holds a master’s degree in psychology and is a certified Business and Virtual Reality Coach.

Suzie Fasciani, Strategist, Discover.ai
Suzie Fasciani is a cultural insights specialist with a focus on implementing trends strategically for brands. With over 10 years’ previous experience as a designer in leading multi-disciplinary communication agencies, she has worked with brands spanning the sectors of food & beverage, alcohol, technology and media.
Suzie joined Discover.ai after achieving her Masters’ in Design and Brand Strategy, and brings a creative lens to comms and innovation briefs. More recently she has worked with their new Scenarios trend methodology, as well as on semiotics and segmentation projects.

Hereward Feldwick, Qualitative Research Director, Basis Research

John Friberg, VP US Research, HRW Healthcare
John Friberg is the US VP of Research at Healthcare Research Worldwide and serves as co-chair of HRW’s Innovation team. John has worked in healthcare market research for 10+ years designing and executing projects using a vast array of methodologies, tools and platforms in an effort to expand the ways our industry is able to understand the world around us.

Daniel Hardwick, Associate Director, 2CV
Daniel is a quantitative researcher with 10 years’ experience in conducting research in the tech and entertainment sector. His current role is as Associate Director at 2CV. His work at 2CV has focused mainly on the gaming sector, working with a range of high-profile companies to help them understand their brands, products and audiences.
In March 2022, he devised and presented a webinar entitled ‘Why Gaming is your portal to the Metaverse’. The webinar was designed to show the essential facts about the Metaverse and gaming. It demonstrated how non-gaming brands could get involved in gaming and by doing so, this would prepare them to take advantage of opportunities available to them in future in the Metaverse. Following the success of this webinar, Daniel continues to work on Metaverse related activities and is looking forward to providing further thought leadership on this topic throughout 2023 and beyond.

David Evans, Senior Director, Global Partnerships, NBC Universal
David is a Senior Director in the Global Advertising and Partnerships team at NBCUniversal. His main responsibility is to manage a team that is based in New York, London and Singapore and looks after all non-US domestic commercial research for NBCU. Prior to joining NBCU, David ran his own research consultancy specializing in advertising and media and also ran business units at Mediatel and BDRC Continental. The recent project on the Metaverse was just one of a number of projects the team conducted in 2022 covering topics such as the B2B Buying Journey, Global Gaming Attitudes, Sports: A Unifying Connector, ESG and Decision Making, Connected TVs and the New Living Room to name a few. David is a Certified Member of the Market Research Society and his team are MRS Company Partners.

Thomas Harwood, Account Director, Ashfield MedComms
Tommy Harwood lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland and oversees a client services team at Ashfield MedComms.  He has always been passionate about science, medicine, health and wellbeing and completed a PhD in biomedical sciences before transitioning into Medical Communications.  He is an experienced project manager and is focused on innovation and transformation in order to deliver novel and bespoke methods of healthcare communication to healthcare professionals (HCPs).  Tommy’s main motivator is to help improve patients’ healthcare experiences and enjoys looking for digital solutions to help educate and inform everyone involved in the patient journey.

Richard Head, Senior Director, Research Partnership
Richard Head is a Senior Director based at Research Partnership’s London office. He has over 15 years of experience in healthcare market research consulting. Richard has built up expertise in a wide range of methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, across many therapy areas. He has particular expertise in interpreting the findings from qualitative and quantitative market research to identify business opportunities and optimise the value proposition for healthcare products. Richard has managed many projects to provide strategic input to the development and commercialization of haematology and oncology products. In 2017, he won the EphMRA Presidents Award for contribution to pharmaceutical market research.

Sandra Hermes, Human Insights Manager, The Coca-Cola Company 
Sandra is a strategic leader & empathetic collaborator, who enjoys working with people, and leveraging each other's strengths. She is an expert in Consumer Research and Strategic Planning with more than 20 years of experience in this area. In her professional career she has had the opportunity to work in many Latin American countries, with different brands, consumers, shoppers, clients, etc. This vast experience has enabled her to build capabilities needed to transform human insights into solid & achievable business growth opportunities. Sandra currently leads Human Insights for The Coca-Cola Company in Latin America.

Sam Hoey, Lead Business Designer, Designit
Sam is a design leader who combines a strategic perspective and attention to detail. As a business design lead at Designit he focuses on developing new propositions and business models by balancing the needs of customers or employees, and the business as well as considering broader externalities and impacts on society and the planet. He has worked across the energy, health and financial sectors and is also a sustainability champion for Designit. Sam has a background including experiential branding and sustainable British furniture design. 

Katy Irving, Global Head of Behavioural Science, HRW Healthcare
Katy Irving leads HRW Shift, a team of experts who apply the latest thinking in behavioural science (psychology, behavioural economics, linguistics, neuroscience) to healthcare market research projects. Over the last 10 years she’s worked regularly to assess technological innovations as part of HRW’s innovation team: including google glass, wearables, augmented and virtual reality. Bringing together her expertise in behavioural science and passion for technology, she comments on the psychological dimensions of engaging with these technologies as well as the social implications of using these as a mode of communication, and has lectured and authored white papers on the topic.

Stephen Johnson, Head of Qualitative Capabilities, Media Development UK, Ipsos

Stefan Kindt, Technology Evangelist, CX Marketing, Nokia
Stefan Kindt is a Technology Evangelist in Nokia’s global marketing organization, driving the latest technology topics of Nokia’s thought leadership program. In his role Stefan is the SME leading the metaverse marketing content including market research activities for the consumer, the enterprise and the industrial. Keeping the balance between technology and business, Stefan is not just looking at the latest technology advances, but he has a great focus on customer use cases and viable business models that drive the real adoption of new technologies. Stefan is helping the Nokia organization to educate on and adapt new technologies and acts as a spokesperson to customers, analysts, and media.
Prior to his current role Stefan has served in various marketing and sales functions within Nokia and Siemens, including Head of Cloud Market Development, Head of Technology Marketing, and Head of Technical Sales for product areas like mobile networks and OSS/BSS as well as for the APJ sales region.

Abigail Kolenbrander, Research Manager, BAMM
Abby is a Research Manager at BAMM New York, leading qualitative research projects across a wide range of sectors including FMCG, finance, tech, and media. Her passion centers around observation-led methodologies, in particular global ethnographic research. She loves to discover what makes people tick, uncover new insights to drive brand strategy, and develop ways to help bring clients closer to their target audience.
Abby has worked on a variety of metaverse focused projects while at BAMM. She has a particular interest in discovering how our digital evolution has influenced us as people; exploring how our digital selves influence our physical selves and vice versa.

Alexandra Kuzmina, Innovation Consultant, Nova MMR
Alexandra Kuzmina is an award-winning, experienced and MRS qualified mixed methods researcher, a futurist, an early adopter of new technology, a research advisor to We&AI. She holds an MA degree and has been trained in Behavioural Economics at MSc level. In her current role at the tech innovation team NOVA at MMR Research Worldwide, Alexandra pressure-tests new technology, software, hardware, techniques, and methodologies to ensure that they deliver value by making insights better, quicker, or cheaper.

Anthony Martin, Global CEO, BAMM
Anthony is Co-founder and CEO of BAMM Global, an award-winning consumer insights and strategy agency based in New York and London. Anthony launched BAMM in 2007 to be an agency of influence and impact. BAMM draws on diverse research approaches to deliver “Living Insight”, making things happen in Clients’ organizations. BAMM combines the deeply strategic with the viscerally powerful, moving clients to act.
Over the years BAMM has conducted extensive research in digital environments, including conducting in-game + out-of-game ethnographies. BAMM has examined consumer behavior within specific metaverse platforms, and kept abreast of how young consumers are shaping the space.
As the metaverse has developed, BAMM’s main focus has been the impact on people and humanity, examining the key forces that will affect us, and understanding the ways we can act now to ensure that we have better outcomes compared to web 2.0.

Alisha Mukherjee, Innovation Manager, Lloyds Banking Group
Alisha is an Innovation Manager at Lloyds Banking Group that specialises in Emerging Technology and what opportunities these can provide for the bank to unlock new business models and clients. This includes evaluating the various use cases around different technologies that could be implemented both internally and externally. Recent projects have involved Blockchain for Banking and recently Banking from and for the Metaverse.

Sherry Nugent, Research Executive, Ipsos

Yuuki Ochiai, EMEA Market Research Manager, Janssen
Yuuki Ochiai leads multi-country Market Research projects across the Haematology brand portfolio at Janssen EMEA. She is an experienced Business Intelligence and Customer Insights professional with awards including BHBIA’s Best Customer Insights and EphMRA’s Best Conference Paper.  Through her career, she has evolved in several functions (Market Research, Business Intelligence, Sales and Operations), geographies (UK, France, Japan, EMEA and Asia Pacific) and industries (Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim in Pharmaceutical, IBM in Technology Services). Having led ‘Innovation in Market Research’ initiative at Janssen EMEA, she is passionate about innovation and emerging methodologies to generate deeper and faster insights through engaging and impactful way. She holds an MBA from INSEAD and lives in France.

Rupert Sinclair, Head of Insight, UK Kadence International
Rupert is Head of Insight for the UK office of Kadence International. He is an expert in consumer behaviour, with a keen interest in digital innovation and disruptive technologies. He is motivated by the desire to deliver insights that create value and drive positive change for his clients and has a passion for pairing traditional research techniques with technology-based solutions.

Faye Soares, Customer Intelligence Manager, Dow Jones
Faye is a Customer Intelligence Manager for Dow Jones, responsible for helping grow the Dow Jones portfolio of brands by delivering best-in-class intelligence and insights. Passionate about providing high quality and cutting edge research and helping stakeholders to understand customer stories and find solutions to their business goals.

Adam Woodgate, Senior VP, Media Insights, Dubit
Adam has accrued over 30 years media, marketing and market research experience, 10 years of which was spent in senior operational roles.
Initially working in audience research for London Weekend Television, he has worked for Emap’s (now Bauer) broadcast properties, Guardian Media Group, BBC Worldwide and Immediate Media Company
Adam joined Dubit in 2013 and presently heads up Dubit Trends - the global children’s media trends tracker, which is where growing engagement with metaverse brands was discovered and continues to be tracked. Using research to inform decision making he supports customers as they venture into this exciting and engaging world.

Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice, Senior Research Manager, Dubit
Dr Dylan Yamada-Rice is a Senior Research Manager for Dubit, a company specialising in research and develop of digital media for children. She is also a Lecturer in Immersive Storytelling at the School of Digital Arts, Manchester Metropolitan University. Dylan’s research sits at the intersection of experimental design and social sciences, focusing on digital storytelling, games and play on a range of platforms such as apps, augmented and virtual reality, as well with emerging technologies, all with an emphasis on media for children. Dylan has Master degrees in Education and another in Research Methods, as well as a PhD connected to young children’s media literacies. This inter-disciplinary background has brought about a specialism in the role of culture in immersive storytelling, as well as how art and design practices can be combined with social science research methods to produce experimental means of collecting and analysing data. She has previously held academic posts at the University of Sheffield and at the Royal College of Art and regularly publishes journal articles and book chapters.