I recently wrapped up an incredible experience speaking at Quirk's Media conference! I presented alongside Kim Kardash, who leads consumer research strategy at Guardian Life. You can catch the replay here.
We opened with a question: How many billion-dollar businesses today started with a survey?
The answer: Negligible, possibly zero.
That’s because market research tends to come late in a company’s lifecycle, once they’ve scaled, hired, and gotten more budget. I helped launch Tableau’s in-house research shop in 2019. Tableau started in 2004. They made it 15 years—and did pretty well—without an insights function.
But I want that narrative to change.
In five years, I want to come back and find that half of all billion-dollar businesses started with a survey.
TL;DR-If you’re skimming, here’s what I hope sticks:
- Panel fraud is costing us big.
- Research manipulation is hurting our credibility.
- Business partners don’t want decks; they want clarity.
- Disruption is already happening.
To get there, a few things need to change. Kim and I unpacked exactly what in our session.
1. Data quality: It’s still terrible, and nothing else works without it.
We’ve got better tools now, like verified data, but panel fraud is still flying under the radar. We talk to people every week who are just learning what it is. Most buyers still shop on price. But if you’re getting bad data, it doesn’t matter how much you saved. The bad quality will cost you later.
My team dug into panel fraud last summer. Catch the webinar here.
2. Validity and reliability: We don’t talk about this enough.
Validity means you’re actually measuring what you think you’re measuring. Reliability means you could measure it again and get the same results. If we want people to act on our data, we have to trust it, and they do, too. That means gut-checking our metrics, constantly.
Rigor matters more than ever. I wrote about it here.
3. Manipulation: Using research nefariously inside an org. It erodes trust fast.
We’ve all heard stakeholder requests like: “I need to prove my campaign was effective. Can we run a survey?” They know they can “torture” the data to say what they want, putting their personal win over the company’s success. That behavior chips away at our function’s credibility, one request at a time.
4. Value creation: Doing more with less isn’t the point. Doing less but better is.
At Tableau, we asked CMOs what they wanted from insights. They said: “I want good enough data, and I want to be told what to do.” Read: they don’t want to dig through crosstabs and slide decks. They just want clarity.
We built NewtonX Hub to eliminate manual work so you can focus on providing clarity and value.
5. Tradition: Legacy research methods are expensive. When prices go up, disruption follows.
It’s happening. AI-moderated qual is having a moment. In the past few months alone, we’ve seen a surge in requests from top companies. Why? Because it’s cheaper and faster (though not necessarily better) than a human researcher. Our budgets are shrinking, AI pressure is rising, and job postings for market researchers are down 2x.
If you need a primer on AI-moderated qual, read about it here.
So what should we do about these challenges?
If you watch any part of the replay, make it Kim’s segment (timestamp 19:02-end). She talks about what to actually do about it, advice I haven’t heard anywhere else:
- Get realistic about your place in the org chart: a supporting role.
- Put your star result on slide one and the methodology in the appendix.
- Push yourself to deliver your story in five slides, one page, one chart, or one sentence.
She’s building something impressive and adaptable. We all need to try a little more of that.
— Jason Talwar
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