Liuvob, welcome. Tell me more, if you would, about the Insight
Lighthouse initiative and how it all started.
Thank you so much for having me here in Boston Consulting Group
Lounge. So first of all, it's an honour to be here and especially
to talk about this initiative. It started when we have
completed the study with ESOMAR about the future of insights
industry, and we have interviewed nearly 700
professionals and half of the sample were people working on
the client side, and half of the sample were people on the
corporate side like myself. Today I'm with Diageo. I'm Head
of Strategy
Analytics and Consumer Planning. I recently joined the company
though. So returning back to your question and to the point I
wanted to bring, actually the study showcases very interesting
conflict because from one hand side, we can see that the
insights industry, they are steadily growing. So it's nearly
$130 billion in net sales in Q 3 2023 based on the evaluation
of Esomar. But at the same time, when we interviewed people, we
found out that people on the
agency side, they're pretty optimistic and very hungry to
adopt AI and continue growing the industry by
proposing the unique capability and tools. But on the client
side, people are struggling a lot. So they are expressing the
difficulties to showcase ROI, to defend budgets and the
experiencing the cuts of the positions. So feels like
something needs to be addressed. That was my feeling. I was super
angry about that and I decided that
maybe we have to gather together as corporate professionals and
discuss how we're going to make an impact, how we're gonna
defend our positions and be associated with the business
growth. And of course, there are many companies that are
very people centric, including Diageo. It's an
amazing organisation that stays very committed to people,
Centricity, Colgate, Palmolive, where I worked. But at the same
time, there are many other companies that based on their
background, they would never been people centric.
So obviously if we look statistically speaking, so this
measure 10, 15 companies that stay people centric not really make a
difference. So for the entire industry, professionals on the
client side feel uncomfortable. So the intent was to gather
together as a client, client based insights professionals and
discuss the future of insights and data analytics industry.
Why bring that to Cannes Lions? -Because I think the intent is to
have the conversation
Not within ourselves, but to invite for the conversation
C-Suite executives. And I'm very pleased that we managed to
attract a very senior and very successful people from major
organisations to have a conversation and to ask their
opinion about what it makes to be associated with the,
with the, the engine of the growth of the company, what we
have to do and obviously sharing the stories. So I think it's
much more impactful if the C-Suite in Colgate Palmolive
tells the story to the C-Suite in other smaller companies or
not people centric companies, that is much more influential
versus being on that side and trying to defend the presence of
insights. So that's that's probably was the mission.
What's the future of Insights looking like? Where do you see
it headed? The future is not owned as well as the success is
never final. I think that the future is in our hands and this
is the right momentum to make a difference because most of the
companies are going through crisis and crisis is the best
time to make a difference because especially for gender
organisations, dependency from the path is the critical thing
and the most of the organisation. At the time of the
crisis when people’s needs are changing by the minute,
they are really open to pivot from the regular routes and to
investigate new opportunities. And this is the pivotal moment
for us because we are the one who can make the link between
the data numbers, IT department, RGM and the business. The
business managers, the C-Suite, the board executives, the
only thing we need to change the way how we act. We need to use
their language and we need to make sure that we kind of show
the quick wins
from early beginning and convey the trust that are given by
projecting return on investment in a smart way and kind of
elevating the movement. And of course, AI is a big thing. So
the only thing returning back to your initial question, why I
wanted to be in Cannes because everyone talks about AI, but
nobody talks about insights. Why don't we start doing that?
So much for your time. Thank you so much.