MRS Best of Events and Awards, Manchester 2024

09.15 Registration

09.45 Opening remarks – Jane Frost CBE, CEO, MRS

9.50 Chair opening address
Nick Meagher, Head of Insight & Research, Co-Op

09.55 Panel – Generative AI
The GenAI Revolution - sharing experiences of using generative AI and how it will change the research industry
This session will explore how Generative AI will change our worlds – the opportunities and the threats; the concerns we have – as consumers, as citizens, as employees; and how GenAI is now being applied in the world of insight and analytics – the services offered by research agencies, tech companies and consultancies, and how client-side researchers are already taking advantage of its potential.
Chair: Nick North, Director of Audiences, BBC
Panellists:
Alex Meehan, Senior Leader in Data Science, Co-op
Bethan Blakeley, Research Director, Boxclever
Shafeeq Shajahan, Product Director, Streetbees
 

10.35 Data Driven Insights
Building the beauty store of the future
L’Oreal wanted to create a seamless online and offline beauty retail experience for its global customer base. In this session, you’ll hear how a project which combined qualitative, quantitative and AI and placed voice of the customer research at the heart of L’Oreal’s decision making, helped internal and external stakeholders quickly understand how to craft the best buying experience for different consumers in different markets.
Lynsey Showman, Chief Growth Officer, Basis
Alexia Scherier, Global Consumer Insight Director, L’Oreal Consumer Products Division – joining by pre-recorded video as Alexia is unable to join live on the day

11.05 – Break

11.30 CX UX MR
Creating & embedding a customer-centric framework in Premier Inn
This session will show how Human8 and Premier Inn worked together to design a research programme that would deliver a customer-centric framework based on the voices of hotel guests. The project, was driven forward by a cross-functional working group across nine functions. It helped Premier Inn understand customers’ emotions, influences, pain points and opportunities at every journey touchpoint. The research scope was broad in nature, covering key customer journey touchpoints from research to stay. It also had ambitious objectives per touchpoint, drilling down into incredible detail. Hear how the research has already delivered impact and how Premier Inn is using the CX framework for future strategic work. 
Louise Hazell, Senior Research Manager, Human8
Katherine Roe, Senior Insight Manager, Whitbread

12.00 Behavioural Economics
Decoding decisions: how do people decide what to buy?
Decoding Decisions is Google and The Behavioural Architects’ research programme that addresses a simple but fundamental question for marketers: how do people decide what to buy?Hear highlights from the newest edition of the work which tackles three environments where marketers have the potential to use BeSci to supercharge the information they present about their brands - Search, website content & apps, and in the places where brands make their products available for sale.
Dipesh Mistry, Associate Director, The Behavioural Architects
Sarah Ashley, EMEA Marketing Insights, Google

12.30 Lunch

13.30 Human centred decision making
Mind the gap: driving human centred decision-making through big business
‘Customer closeness’ and ‘closer to the consumer’ are mantras in Insight. Rightly so. We spend our lives deep diving into how people engage with, think and feel about brands…then bury this depth in dreary PowerPoint or swamp it in too much detail: we need to inject life and bravery into delivery and inspire stakeholders to act. We need to be bold.
BUT there is risk here too.
Stakeholders are people, and not all people respond in the same way. What agencies consider ‘fun’, ‘high impact’ and ‘memorable’ can actually become an excruciating cringeworthy experience for client-side teams – and your session is remembered for all the wrong reasons.
If your extraverted stakeholders have aspirations of ‘Am Dram’ and love being the centre of attention, ‘role play focus groups’ can navigate the empathy gap beautifully. If they are introverts, you have humiliated them and left them feeling so uncomfortable they will remember nothing but the pain of the pseudo-GSCE drama experience.
In this practical session, Co-Op and Kokoro (and Kokoro’s The Score) share some startling stats on your stakeholders, give you the tools to get to understand them as people, and challenge you to find the best way to land the message.
Hannah Rogers, New Business Director, Kokoro
Sarah De Caux, Lead Analytics & Insights Manager, Co-Op
 

14.20 Short break

14.30 Cultural Insights & Gen Z
Gen Z in the political year ahead
We’re a long way away from where we were for the December 2019 general election, so we are going to see a very different election to what we have seen before. This will be the first year for 1 in 4 of Gen Z to have the chance to vote, and many are unsure of things around politics, meaning they may learn and change their minds and position. Emily Driscoll talks us through what to expect to see from Gen Z in the political year ahead.    
Emily Driscoll, Head of Data Intelligence and Planning, LadBible

15.00 Break

15.25 Sustainability Research
Sustainability 2022 & beyond?: immersive research shared through immersive storytelling
Food manufacturer Samworth Brothers has been working with Boxclever to uncover what sustainability means for consumers today and for the future. This is the story of how an immersive program of research into consumer attitudes to sustainability, made a deep and lasting impact with all stakeholders thanks to some original thinking and innovative storytelling.
Lucy Hobbs, Research Director, Boxclever Consulting
Kate Bayliffe, Group Insight Manager, Samworth Brothers

15.55 EDI Research
Mirrors & Windows: media and identity in modern Britain
Google undertook an ambitious research programme with MTM to understand how people’s identity informs what they love to watch, and what that means for the U.K. media industry. We learnt that marketing & media have the power to make us all feel, whatever our identity, like we belong. That’s a pretty big responsibility and an exciting opportunity for our industries! In recent years the advertising industry has made progress towards becoming more inclusive and portraying a more diverse and representative picture of Britain. However, it’s still often easier to solve this challenge ‘in front of the camera’ (with diverse talent) than ‘behind the camera’ (in production, planning, strategy, etc). This session will introduce you to some of the award-winning research and planning work within inclusive media, and present insights from both audiences and experts that might help inform your thinking.
Sarah Ashley, EMEA Marketing Insights, Google
Caroline Wren, Managing Director, MTM

16.25 Storytelling
The art of the spectacle
Drawing on techniques from theatre and stage, journalism, books and beyond, Karen and Liga will share their experiences of using different techniques in various settings to better tell stories and leave audiences feeling inspired. We might not want people booing and hissing during a debrief, like they would in a pantomime, but we want them to engage in our stories, to be moved by them, and to act on them as a result. 
Karen Schofield, Head of Qual, Blue Yonder Research
Liga Magdelenoka-Keen, Director of International Insights, Scientific Games

16.55 Closing comments from the chair

 
17.00 Conference close

17.15 Sponsored drinks reception