&more Virtual Conference 2024

09.15am Welcome from the Chairs

LaShanda Seaman, Associate Director Qualitative Research & Engagement Centre, Ipsos UK
Carolina Starkhammar, Principal, Incite

09.25am – 10.00am

Trusted influencers: why you should invite teens into your research

Entitled? Flaky? Economically dependent? Phone addicts?... it’s easy to assume we already know all about teenagers. But this panel will challenge assumptions and give a fresh perspective on this audience. Drawing on findings from The Nursery’s thought leadership ‘Coming of Age’ and their own research experience, the panellists will show us what we’re missing out on, and how young researchers are uniquely placed to engage this audience of the future. Discover:

• The influential role of teenagers on older generations. From fashion to music to news, this young audience are shaping how we engage with trends.
• How teens behave online; their fear of cancel culture is impacting how they show up in the world, and the gender divide is causing young people to exist in different online spaces.
• Teen representations in advertising & culture; how including teens as part of the conversation challenges us for the better.
• How young researchers can harness their own natural influence with this age group through peer-to-peer moderating styles.

This panel discussion will culminate with a call to arms to include teenagers in your research, even if they’re not on the brief.

Sophie Marder, Associate Director, The Nursery Research & Planning
Razia Hussain, Senior Research Executive, The Nursery Research & Planning
Zuzanna Spizak, Senior Research Executive, The Nursery Research & Planning
Ella Cathersides, Senior Research Executive, The Nursery Research & Planning

10.00am – 10.25am

Beyond good intentions: elevating research standards on a budget

Khulisa (meaning "to nurture" in Zulu) is an award-winning national charity supporting young people aged 11-25 who have faced trauma or adversity. These experiences can significantly impact a young person's social and emotional development, hindering self-confidence and coping skills.

Khulisa helps young people to face this challenge by delivering targeted therapeutically informed 1:1 and group programmes in secondary schools. However, like many non-profits, Khulisa faces a unique challenge: finding evaluation methods that capture the essence of these innovative interventions.

This session goes beyond good intentions. Join Zaynab Osman, Head of Evidence and Impact, to discover how Khulisa is elevating research standards in the non-profit sector, even with limited resources.

Learn how Khulisa are:

• capturing the true impact of creative programmes, ensuring strong evidence underpins impactful work.
• exploring practical strategies to maximize research effectiveness.
• empowering beneficiaries through research by leveraging data to tailor support and empower young people.

Zaynab Osman, Head of Evidence and Impact, Khulisa
Tiah Stewart, Programme Manager and Youth Voice lead, Khulisa

10.25am – 10.50am

Rising up the ranks: Hints and tips for success from young leaders for young leaders

In the dynamic world of market research, career development can take many exciting paths. The journeys of Alex Martin, Kate Sips-Avello, and Nina Glynn provide excellent examples of varied and inspiring routes through the industry. This session will share how they became young leaders in Bulbshare, rising rapidly through the ranks to the key strategic positions that they occupy now. 

They’ll be telling their stories and giving hints and tips to inspire the next set of leaders, including:

• How to best embrace diverse roles and build a well-rounded skillset.
• How to create a strong professional network, connecting with peers and mentors outside of work as well as in.
• How to cultivate leadership qualities such as empathy, decisiveness, and the ability to inspire and motivate your team.
• How to navigate your career, keeping it on track by assessing your progress.

Alex Martin, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Bulbshare
Kate Sips-Avello, Project Manager, Bulbshare
Nina Glyn, Head of Content, Bulbshare

10.50am Break (25 mins)

11.15am – 11.40am

Context Effects

Context matters for advertising effectiveness, and the living room reigns supreme! That’s the key insight from the latest Thinkbox study which delves into the home environment to uncover where adverts are most likely to stick in viewers’ minds – and the reasons behind this powerful impact. Nailah Uddin from Thinkbox, and Matthew Austin with Elle Kindler from Tapestry will take the audience through these insights and explain the exciting qualitative and quantitative techniques used to understand the fragmented world of video advertising across screens and platforms.

Nailah Uddin, Research Manager, Thinkbox
Matthew Austin, Data Analytics Manager, Tapestry Research
Elle Kindler, Associate Director, Tapestry Research

11.40am – 12.15pm

Matter Matters: The Impact of Materiality and Arts-Based Techniques in Uncovering Cultural & Consumer Insights

The goal of this session is to re-emphasise and embed the importance of materiality in research, encourage you to think differently about research with ‘things’, and consider the use of material and arts-based methods as a way to uncover otherwise hidden insights.

We are always interacting with ‘things’ to facilitate, to express and to connect in our daily lives. Beyond the bottom-line, the momentary and ritualised encounters with ‘matter’ constitute an experience where they become important to consumers, where ‘success’ is assessed through attributes experienced through their senses and made sense of through broader cultural signifiers.

Covering some of the underpinning theory – cultural and sensory – this session will provide an introduction on making sense of interactions with matter from bigger cultural stories down to the individual who experiences the world around them through their senses.

Dr Lauren Greehy, Research Manager, Ninth Seat
Dr Natalie Edwards, Managing Director, Canopy Insights

12.15pm Lunch (1 hour)

1.15pm – 1.40pm

What happens when you let young researchers break things and rebuild them with AI

In 2023, young researchers from HarrisX dismantled the research process and rebuilt it, using as many AI tools as they could. Find out what worked. What didn't work. What was learnt on the way. And what this means for young researchers.

This session will discuss:

• The operational perils of trying to use too much AI in one go and when too much AI creates more operational problems than methodological rewards.
• The fine balance between AI saving time and just changing where we invest time, especially in data processing.
• What about our AI experimentation work scared and excited our clients – how to balance new/novel with familiar/failsafe when seeking client support to try AI tools.

Becca Byrne, Senior Research Executive, Harris X

1.40pm- 2.05pm

To what extent should AI generated responses be considered an acceptable form of participant contribution?

As qualitative researchers, we’re always trying to dig into emotion and hear honest, personal audience views. If AI is designed into a study to creatively facilitate this, surely, it’s an asset. But, when participants use AI against the research to cut corners, we sacrifice the quality and validity of the insight.

This session will explore how to spot and handle AI-generated responses and hopes to inspire conversation on what a future partnership of qualitative AI could look like, considering the benefits and challenges of AI use in market research.

Jonny Dodson, Qualitative Research Executive, Opinium
Suzan Akbulut, Research Executive, Opinium

2.05pm – 2.30pm

Creative Segmentation - Testing New Tools for Memorable Insights

In market research, segmentation is key to understanding diverse audiences, but traditional primary research methods can be limited in audience breadth. No matter how good a segmentation is, it often loses the nuances that are so integral to truly understanding segments.

Madano's innovative approach uses social media ethnography along with AI tools to create vivid and nuanced segments, delivering insights that are not just memorable but impactful. This innovative methodology not only optimises storytelling but also ensures that the insights gained are more impactful and enduring.

Join us to dive into a case study that sheds light on the tools Madano have used to uncover and develop segmentation narratives, ensuring their relevance and nuance are articulated impactfully and resonate long after the presentation ends.

Arian Oldroyd, Creative Director, Madano
Jarlath Mulhern, Senior Research Executive, Madano

2.30pm – 2.55pm Break (25 mins)

2.55pm- 3.20pm

Internet Investigators

Children’s online safety is an urgent social issue. Internet Investigators was a pilot programme delivered by Together for Childhood in Plymouth primary schools to help children learn about being and feeling safe online. Through a creative and participatory evaluation approach, children’s own ideas and experiences guided the development of this exciting work. This helped create an effective and inclusive programme that met children’s actual needs.

This session will share how Together for Childhood innovated methodologically to create the conditions for children to feel empowered, using free recall exercises including writing, drawing, verbal feedback, and group discussion to support diversity in self-expression in a playful atmosphere. This was particularly powerful for children who have special educational needs and disabilities. Children also highlighted the importance of anonymity in sharing their ideas to express themselves freely.

Discover how the evaluation itself led to positive outcomes for the children involved, and how the success of the methods resulted in them being scaled up across other sites in the UK.

Alex Burgess, Researcher, Together for Childhood in Plymouth, NSPCC

3.20pm – 3.55pm

Working Well Together – AURA’s client-led initiative to improve mental health

AURA – the UK’s biggest community of clientside researchers – launched the Working Well Together Charter earlier this year: because the way clients and research agencies communicate and collaborate can make a real difference to people’s confidence and wellbeing.  

Clientside researchers who support the Charter are committing to a set of behaviours when working with agencies. Insight work is valuable and sometimes high pressured, and no client can promise to remove all of that; but the Charter is a declaration of mutual respect and empathy, co-created with AURA members and agency partners, aimed at eliminating unnecessary pressure – which will lead to better work and stronger research partnerships.

In this session, AURA will discuss the 6 principles of the Charter, and how everyone, clientside or agency side, can contribute to positive change.

 
Ruth Hinton, Group Head of Customer Experience & Insight, Vue International
Rupesh Patel, Head of Insights, Samsung
Katrina Rayment, Senior Research Executive, Trinity McQueen

3.55pm – 4.20pm

CloseUp, shaping the future of consumer research by bringing together human creativity and tech to finally close the SAY-DO gap.

This session will present how Connexin Media and Unpitchd used Connexin’s Connected Technology to help unlock the ‘natural state’ of vulnerable people and their carers. The aim of the project was to identify how they could help vulnerable people live at home independently, for longer.

To approach this challenge, they deployed CloseUp, an insights solution built to enhance expert creativity with technology to capture the most valuable insights, which we know come up in conversations and in moments when consumers are in their ‘natural state.’

Using WhatsApp, they lived in the pockets of eight informal carers for three days, setting them on-going diary tasks to gather a contextual view of their lives; as well as asking them to complete daily ‘missions’ to explore specific care challenges and relational dynamics.

Now in our sixth year, we’ll be finding out how young researchers are leading the industry in use of AI, discovering how to elevate research standards on a budget, and exploring a range of innovative methodologies to set you apart in your career. The result was an in-depth multi-media empathetic perspective on life as a carer; surfacing different tensions and needs around caring for a loved one. These insights were applied to an Innovation Sprint, enabling Connexin to immerse themselves in their consumers lives and inform the design of their connected technology solution.  

Sophie Butterfield, Insights and Strategy Lead, Unpitchd
Hai Bei Chen, VP Marketing, Connexin Media

4.20pm – 4.30pm Closing remarks from the Chairs

Carolina Starkhammar, Principal, Incite
LaShanda Seaman, Associate Director Qualitative Research & Engagement Centre, Ipsos UK

4.30pm Conference Close