The Power of Pattern Recognition: How Renee Reeves Built a Career in Market Intelligence.

Few of us grow up saying we want to be an “insights professional.” Most children would say they want to be a police officer, an astronaut, or a soccer player…but never an insights professional. And that’s fair. The role probably doesn’t seem very glamorous to most. Often, it seems many people aren’t even sure what an insights professional does or how they plug into the business world. Renee Reeves didn’t have it on her radar either.

Growing up, Ms. Reeves was repeatedly classified as gifted and talented. She graduated from high school with an Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate diploma and was 33rd in a class of 459. She spoke French fluently by the time she was 15 and traveled to Paris as a foreign exchange student at 16. Her career goal was set: to be an obstetrician. Not because she liked the idea of working 24-hour shifts in the hospital or endless hours of studying for the MCAT. She was drawn in by Science and the wonder behind how nothing becomes something and how one small adjustment can change everything.

The Procter & Gamble Apprenticeship That Changed Everything

Prior to the start of her freshman year of college, she worked as an apprentice at Procter and Gamble on the FemCare analytical team. The apprenticeship dove into the science of female anatomy, performing laboratory tests on hygiene products for FDA approval. As exciting and interesting at it sounds, the job itself was underwhelming. 

Every day was the same. Sterilizing the lab, executing the syngyna testing method, recording the results, sterilizing the lab, then leaving for the day. Initially, it was challenging, but once she was able to execute the work on her own, it lacked the excitement she had envisioned. There were no people, no problems to be solved, simply a textbook execution of scientifically proven processes. She started to suspect this wasn’t the path for her after all. It was too…sterile.

When Medicine (and Marketing) Didn’t Fit

It became even more apparent during her first anatomy and physiology class that medicine may not be her jam. “That” part of science wasn’t what drove her curiosity. At the advice of her academic advisor, who only had one spot left in the marketing program, Rennee changed her major to marketing, which didn’t appear to be her jam, either…she promptly failed marketing 101. Marketing was about selling. Eww.

As college progressed, the flame of curiosity for science was slowly smothered by the business management courses that filled her schedule. In 2009, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business management. After accepting a procurement admin role at Kroger, she was tasked with pulling reports to forecast warehouse fulfillment. As Renee poured over the data, she found trends and patterns within the numbers. Data analyst work reignited her curiosity and put her back on the path she was meant to be on all along.

From Kroger to CPG: Learning the Language of Shopper Behavior

After a few years of optimizing forecasting with DunnHumby, IRI, and Nielsen data for Kroger, she was able to easily land jobs with brands that were champing at the bit to do business with the grocery giant. Analyst work appeared in many forms for Renee, from writing pickle planograms for a Kroger third-party service provider to breaking down organic baby food shopper data in IRI for a sales broker.

Each new analyst role delivered a new level of complexity, a new story that needed to be painted, and a hurdle to overcome. After various roles navigating data for CPG clients, she was offered a position she couldn't refuse in an industry she had never explored, publishing, as an analyst with E.W. Scripps.

The Shift to Media: Where “Consumer Insights” Finally Had a Name

Her time in CPG allowed her to understand shopping behavior patterns and how retooling a planogram could convince a buyer they were getting a great deal. Working in media was a switch. Now she was identifying viewing patterns and working to change them with content. It was there that she met her boss, Sean, who has since become her mentor.  He gave this work a name: “consumer insights”, which married her love of data with the science of human behavior. Armed with her newfound title, Insights Analyst, she began driving marketing strategy. 

But this was a different type of marketing, not the one she failed back in college. This level of marketing was more than selling something; it was the psychology of selling driven by data. When Sean recognized her spark, rather than smothering it, he fueled it. He insisted that she do quantitative research to answer some of her questions when studying viewership. Questions like “why are people tuning out after 10 seconds?” and “where are they going?”. That role eventually led to her creating and managing an internal consumer panel, which she grew to over 4,000 loyal viewers who responded to her surveys for stickers and branded koozies.

KFC and the Full-Spectrum Insights Role

Her work was now used to drive editorial content strategy, and she had found her rhythm. She even had a name for it, but she still felt like there was more out there for her. The “more” showed up in the form of a KFC recruiter that landed in her LinkedIn inbox in April 2023. The opportunity presented with the legacy brand resided within the marketing department on the consumer insights team.

The role’s focus included everything she loved to do, with a bonus: competitive analysis. She accepted the opportunity to become the new market intelligence and consumer insights manager for KFC U.S. without hesitation. This role allowed her to monitor brand health, test new concepts, supervise product naming research, analyze competitive strategy, and track correlations. As a bonus, she could ask “why” to thousands of consumers to help color the picture she had drawn in data.

Renee has since taken that spark and shifted into a place that allows her to fulfill her curiosity on her terms. In October of 2025, she opened Mosaic Intel, LLC. A company that strives to help businesses reach the right audience. Using her analytical superpower and her natural affinity for consumer behavior, she points businesses in the right direction via go-to-market strategies, brand positioning, custom research, and insights advisory services.

Why Consumer Insights Is a Career You “Find” (Not One You Plan)

Consumer insights doesn't fit neatly into a box. Its quantitative, qualitative, brand health, storytelling, and analysis. Insights lives at the intersection of science and art. It is where consumer intelligence meets narrative strategy. And like Renee, as long as you keep chasing your curiosity, you will find the path you were meant to be on all along.