Insights, Spirits, and Strategy: A Conversation with Suntory’s Paul Thomas

In this episode of the Greenbook Podcast, host Karen Lynch sits down with Paul Thomas, International Insight Director and Global Head of Shopper Insight at Suntory Global Spirits. Known for his extensive experience and leadership in the insights industry, Paul shares his journey from working on the agency side to leading global insights for top-tier brands like Ferrero, Diageo, and Asahi. They discuss the evolving role of client-side researchers, the challenges faced by the spirits industry, and the importance of driving ROI through actionable insights.

Paul offers a candid look at how researchers must step beyond data to become persuasive storytellers and business drivers. Whether you're on the agency or client side, this episode is packed with wisdom for navigating the changing landscape of market research.

Topics Covered:

Paul’s Career Journey

• Transitioning from agencies like Nielsen and Ipsos to leading insights for global brands.
• Lessons learned from working in diverse markets, including Africa and Asia.

The State of the Spirits Industry

• Challenges faced by alcohol brands in a post-pandemic world.
• How rising health consciousness and changing consumer habits impact brand strategy.

Driving ROI in Insights

• Shifting from data delivery to actionable recommendations.
• The art of persuasion and why storytelling alone isn’t enough.

Client-Agency Dynamics

• What makes a successful partnership.
• Paul’s advice for agencies: be bold, collaborative, and insightful.

The Role of AI and the Future of Insights

• Opportunities and risks of AI in research.
• Why traditional methods still hold value in an increasingly tech-driven industry.

Resources & Links:

• Learn more about Suntory Global Spirits: Suntory.com

You can reach out to Paul on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Paul Thomas for joining the show. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

Karen: Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. I’m happy to be hosting today. It’s Karen Lynch, and I have the honor and privilege of talking to somebody who’s so well known in our industry, Paul Thomas, who is with Suntory Global Spirits. His current title is International Insight Director and Global Head of Shopper Insight. Paul, welcome to the show. It’s such a privilege to have you here for real.

Paul: Thanks for having me, Karen. And yeah, firstly, I have one of the most preposterously long job titles in the world. And if I’m known in the industry, I hope it’s at least for mostly good things, you know [laugh].

Karen: [laugh]. Lots of good things. Well, I think that some people—and that’s part of what we’ll talk about today—some people do just rise to the level of a leader in the industry through… kind of a curated career path with very deliberate moves. When you happen to be on the brand side and you land in some brilliant companies, I think people start to pay attention to you. Certainly, in our ecosystem, you are at the top of the food chain when you’re on the brand side. So anyway, it’ll be great to talk to you. Why don’t you share a little bit about your current role with our audience and introduce yourself in that scope because it’s better than a bio.

Paul: Perfect, thank you. I really have two jobs. One of them is, I look after what equates to all insights in our EMEA region. So, particular focus in India, Brazil, Spain, Germany, UK, France. But then I have global responsibility for all of our shopper insight around path to purchase or point of sale materials or virtual test environments. So, I have a really mixed bag, plus I sort of stick my nose into everything else as well, whether it’s wanted or not.

Karen: Well, that sounds like two jobs in one though. Like—

Paul: It is, but only one salary, Karen. That’s the issue, isn’t it?

Karen: It doesn’t seem right.

Paul: No, it does also reflect—like, my attitude in insights has always been… I don’t want to be pigeonholed to doing one thing. I don’t want to become the advertising insight person, the Nielsen insight person. I want to be able to do all of it.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah well, let’s talk a little bit about that because I think you’re—as we kind of were talking about on the pre-show briefly—like, your career path has been a very interesting one. You’ve been on both the client side and the agency side. So, share your background with our listeners too because it’s interesting.

Paul: Cool. So, I started my career about 20 years ago now, scarily. It doesn’t feel like 20 years.

Karen: It goes by fast [laugh].

Paul: I started, you know, big agencies, Nielsen and Ipsos. Learned a lot, had a great time, really got my basics in place, which I still believe today, whether you’re client side or whether your agency side, if you don’t know how to write the questionnaire, or you don’t know how to write a report, it makes it much harder to do your job. So, I did that about five years. Then I got frustrated by always, sort of, delivering a project. And then that’s it. You don’t hear back from the client. You don’t hear from them again. I wanted to learn more about end-to-end. So, I moved to—amazingly, the first job I applied for, I managed to get, which was insight manager for Ferrero, the chocolate company, looking after amazing brands like Kinder, Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, Tic Tac, things like that. Over the couple of years, was running that insight team. Then I moved across to Diageo, world’s largest supreme spirits company, where I undertook a real challenge of being head of insight for Africa, and which was just the best time of my career, really. I visited so many different markets, learned so much. Like, there are just these hilarious photos of me as a sort of six-foot-one, 300—not 300—250 pound guy in these bars with these tiny little Ethiopians. Fantastic journey. I then spent a year just in a pure innovation role at Diageo. So, I stepped out of insights for a while. I was offered the opportunity to set up Asahi beer’s, first ever global insight team, which I did for three, four years. Then the pandemic hit. I was made redundant, so I took a step back to a consultancy, a brilliant London-based consultancy called the Forge who are absolutely super-full of really bright people. But that’s sort of itch, that itch to get back client-side came quite quickly. So, when Suntory came along, this role seemed absolutely perfect. You know, I always try and work on categories that I enjoy. I’m much happier talking about whiskey than I am about toilet roll. Let’s put it like that.

Karen: Yeah [laugh].

Paul: And that’s where you’ve find me today.

Karen: Nutella might have put up a good fight there, you know. I keep thinking, like, it would be a heck of a time to work on that brand, right? Anyway.

Paul: Yeah, I mean, you used to have on every table in the office, they’d be a pile of chocolate. It was not good for the waistline, but oh my God. It was just a pile of empty wrappers sort of followed me around [laugh].

Karen: I remember—you know, so obviously we are at work in two different continents, and I remember the first time I ended up in Europe and there was, you know, a Nutella-like substance that—it wasn’t branded Nutella, I don’t believe—but anyway, chocolate on the breakfast table at one of my first hotels in Europe. And I was like, “Hold up.” I was like, I was 18 years old. I felt like I had been robbed. I was like, “This is acceptable? Like, we are able to just put, like, this chocolate spread on our bread?”

Paul: To be fair, you guys had maple syrup which you coat everything—yeah.

Karen: [laugh]. That’s true. It’s true. Especially in New England. I did grow up with maple syrup and roll—my father—anyway, this is a sidebar that we don’t have to take. But yeah, we used to dunk hard rolls into maple syrup in the morning, and that was acceptable. So.

Paul: That’s a good time [laugh].

Karen: I don’t know. Good times. So yeah, but I love that you’re back in spirits. Diageo is not too far—one of the offices, the US headquarters of Diageo, is not too far in Connecticut. So, you know, very familiar with them. But one of the things I read that you recently wrote—and then we’ll get back on track, I promise—is about some of the challenges about the industry in general and how you have to kind of tackle that. I think it was in your LinkedIn post, the one that first caught my eye, even about the podcast, you were saying, you know, we have to—the alcohol industry is, you know, facing some challenges. Can you speak to any of that real quick?

Paul: So really, you know, it’s a challenging time for the alcohol industry. It’s the first time in about 20 years that the volumes are down globally, right? It’s been—we’ve always talked about spirits or alcohol as being, like, recession-proof. For the first time, it’s not. And, you know, what’s happened, really, is that during Covid and during all the lockdowns, alcohol became a huge chunk of people’s disposable spend, right? You know, lots of people were drinking probably more than they should have done or would do regularly, but then when it came out of Covid, it really struggled to keep its role. You’ve got, you know, huge economic pressure, the cost of living is through the roof. I mean, you know, whether it’s the US tipping culture, where you have one beer and you have to give a 20—you’ll get turned—people will reject a 20% tip, virtually. You know, UK, you can now spend, you know, up to £10 a pint in London, which is ridiculous. You’ve got health concerns. You’ve got the fact that consumers want to project this positive image of themselves through Instagram. You’ve got the rising acceptability of cannabis culture in parts of the world. All of these things have created this perfect storm which makes it really challenging. You know, luckily, at Suntory, with a very premium position portfolio, I mean, particularly, you know, whether it’s your Japanese whiskeys, your Laphroaigs, your Makers Marks, your Basil Hayden’s, that’s a fantastic portfolio for consumers, who at the moment, they’re drinking less, but want to choose better options. But it doesn’t mean it’s easy, even with a good, strong premium portfolio.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. No, I love that you spent a few minutes on that, thank you. Because I think that it’s easy for anybody who, you know, works on the brand side to spend a lot of time thinking about their brand challenges or what their category is facing, when the reality [laugh] is there are challenges in just about every category out there, right? So, you know, everybody has them, they’re all unique, and whether you’re in the spirits industry listening to this, or whether you’re in, you know, another category, I think the reality is, is that people feel your pain, right? There’s lots of—it’s a very complex world.

Paul: I saw some really interesting data—and I might butcher the exact numbers, but you’ll forgive me—showing that when a brand grows or declines, 50% of that growth or decline is just simply due to the category dynamics. So, not what you’re doing, not your price, not your advertising, not your innovation, up to half of your success or failure is simply dictated by whether people are coming down that shopping aisle or not. That means you have to work extra hard to win with that 50% you can influence.

Karen: No, super interesting. Thank you for sharing that. So, I do also, you know, before we get into some of the things that we want to talk about, just life as a client-side researcher, compared to kind of being on the agency side and that partnership, I do also want to, like, verbally shout out my thank you for making room for this podcast because you ended the year saying, “Maybe I’m not going to overextend and say yes to everything,” and then I’m like, “Except please say yes to me.” So, thank you for your gracious—[laugh].

Paul: Well, no, I think you also caught me over the Christmas period. I probably had about three brandies at that point, you know. I would have said yes to anything.

Karen: Excellent. I’m so glad. Well, on behalf of myself, the Greenbook team and our listeners, you know, thank you again for doing this. So, let’s just talk about that, the life on the client side for a bit; since you have done both, you’re uniquely kind of positioned. But one of the things that we discussed kind of proactively is how to drive ROI when you are on the client side. Really, you have to—many people feel that they are still proving themselves as the importance of the insights department or what that work can inform. So, talk to me a little bit about how you do what you do. How do you demonstrate the value of insights across your org?

Paul: It’s a really great question. That pressure for return on investment is something that certainly in my career, obviously can get a lot… a lot bigger. My boss has a fantastic phrase, which is, “We’re not going to do any research unless it sells us more cases,” right? And that’s a great way of looking at it. Research perhaps used to be, you know, fairly clever academic people sitting in a little bit of a side room, providing big reports, providing really clever segmentations, lots of qual, hundreds [of qual decks 00:10:41], with no ‘so what,’ right? Now, it’s not just ‘so what,’ the expectation is ‘now what?’ So, what do we do with this? Every piece of work needs to have, what does the business do differently as a result of this? And that is a big change in attitude from, I’m here to deliver research, to, I’m here to drive the business forward; research is part of my toolkit to achieve that. So, and it’s always making sure that these research decks, these research recommendations are getting in front of the really most important people in the business. If you’re doing innovation or advertising, you’re about to spend millions of people, you’ve got to get in front of your marketing director or your GM even sometimes. So, that stepping out of the side room to being almost on stage, if you like, to, you know, we have a role, we’re here to drive the business forward. We’re not just sort of losers sitting with Excel sheets, you know. Actually, that’s not what we do. We drive the business forward and ultimately we’re sales people, Karen. One of the things that I’ve seen a lot of is the success of a project is 50% the quality of the research and 50% the quality of the person trying to sell in the recommendation. I’ve seen people with the most ironclad research present it in a really bad way and then they don’t go ahead with the recommendation. I’ve seen other people who are more showman, showperson-like, a bit more commercially-minded, a bit more engaging, who can take reasonable research and turn it into the best thing to slice bread. So actually, you’re a salesperson, you’re a business leader, you need to understand your finance teams, you need to understand your P&Ls, you really need to understand marketing. Knowing research actually is, like, one of a hundred things you need to be able to do now.

Karen: You know what? You just switched something in my bra—you know, one of those aha moments for me, and I’m really glad we’re having this conversation. But there’s so much talk about storytelling in the industry and I think that’s great. Storytelling is important, don’t get me wrong. But the art of persuasion, and that sales component, that ability to sell those recommendations because if you can’t persuade somebody to implement something that you’re recommending then your work definitely has less ROI. I love that you brought that to light, Paul. Interesting.

Paul: And I think one of the things I’d say as well is—and I completely agree with storytelling, right?—but you’ve also got to get people to want to open the book. You can have the most beautifully constructed story over 30 to 50 slides. If you’re not the right person who’s going to—the GM’s going to go, “Well, Paul’s here. I want to listen to him because what he says matters,” then it doesn’t matter. They won’t open the book. I also think—and this is a big bugbear of mine at the moment—we’ve moved away from presenting work to, “Can you send me a pre-read? Don’t worry, I’ll just read the deck.” My best meeting last year, without a moment’s doubt, was a face-to-face debrief about some advertising. It was only a small project, maybe six focus groups, but it was old-school. We had the [qualie 00:14:03] in the room, we had me, we had my internal clients, and that was the best conversation we had all year. We need to get back to insights people listening to us, versus here’s the report, you read it and then we’ll go away. I think Covid has made us a bit lazy about enforcing some of that face-to-face stuff.

Karen: Yeah. I think as you said that also, I had a flashback to—you know, so—and I think I shared—I was a qualitative researcher for 30 years prior to joining Greenbook, so long history as a qualitative researcher. And one of my most memorable days in the field, if you can picture it, is an in-person presentation—I traveled from Connecticut to New York, which I did frequently—but presented findings to a room of about 50 stakeholders. It was a huge presentation, and I remember being a little bit terrified, but so polished, really focused on the presentation. There was a research deck, but then there was the presentation deck, and those were two very different things for me. So, it’s interesting to think about how that may be gone when you’re presenting research findings or are you presenting a presentation?

Paul: Yeah, and I think that’s such a big difference. I don’t want anyone to present research. I want people to present recommendations.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, really good stuff. So, let's think for a minute about, okay, if you think about why that’s so important, let’s connect some dots for our readers. That is so important because, dot dot dot. What does it mean for the people you’re presenting to? Why does that approach matter?

Paul: Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, look, people don’t necessarily want to listen to research, people don’t necessarily want to listen to someone external tell them things, right? Having that power of persuasion, having that power to make people realize that you’re on the same boat as them, I always say that. I think it used to be, like, marketing versus research. We’re all on the same team. I need marketing to perform well to get my bonus. I need marketing to perform well to grow the business. So, you need to persuade your colleagues that you’re there for their best interests. You know, sometimes that might be medicine they don’t enjoy swallowing, but you’re there for their best interests, and that, yeah, you have a stake in the game as well. I think the old days of research, particularly client-side research teams, was like, well, we’re separate to the business, we do research, we’re the clever ones. Well, no, we’re all in—we all have to. If advertising doesn’t work, then we’ve wasted millions of dollars.

Karen: Yeah. I want to go back to something that you said and segue into the client-agency relationship and how we can leverage some strengths there. But you had mentioned last year, you were in this kind of in-person presentation and you had your research partner with you in the room. And the idea of you’re all in the same boat, right? Let’s talk a little bit about that kind of a partnership. What defines that level of a successful partnership to you?

Paul: Yeah, really great question. I think there’s a few things. I think agencies have to get closer to our business. And it’s difficult. Some clients don't give you the information you need to do that. I always do. There should be collaboration throughout the process. So, I always—if I can, you know, time dependent—say, look, before you start writing a report, whether this is quant or qual, and I’m helped by the fact I’m ex-agency so I can do it, let’s get in a room together and agree the story. So collaboration, whereas a lot of agencies would still rather write a hundred slides, for me then to go, well, no, I don’t like half of those and that’s wrong. So collaboration, interest in the business. And one thing I don’t believe in is that agencies are there to be objective. I hate that phrase. That means you hide behind data. Agencies are there to give us a recommendation based on their objective understanding of the data, but they can’t come in and sit on the fence. And I… it is increasing frustration of mine that I think we’re becoming an industry of yes people looking for positives, not wanting to offend anyone. You know, I’ve seen some posts on LinkedIn this week about, we need to be less critical as an industry. No, we need to be more critical, in a constructive way. Because when you hear things like Nielsen saying 90% of innovations don’t last two years, or you know that half of advertising is ineffective, yeah, we need to be more critical, we need more honest. And agencies need to have a big, bold pair of kahoonas to come and tell us the truth even if we don’t like it. I have seen so many agencies saying things like, “We don’t want to say that. Might upset the client.” You’ve got to do it. And you are being intellectually disingenuous if you change the results to suit what the client wants. Or not change the results, but change the interpretation of those results.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting because I remember, when you have a career that spans a decade or two or three, you know, you have this pivotal moment where suddenly you feel like, you know what, I feel like I can and should make this recommendation. Something happens in a researcher’s brain for when you’re a younger researcher to when you’re a more seasoned researcher, where suddenly you start to have confidence, and can speak with some conviction about this is what I believe is the right decision here or is the move you should make. And I think that is, like, a career milestone that I think more people should strive for is, like, when does that happen? When a researcher starts to intuit the very next thing that they should recommend or something like that, they should try to freeze-frame that moment and note it because that’s a big deal, right? Being able to say with conviction, “This is what I think you should do.” Because then it’s up to the clients then to say yes or no. I mean, they’re not forcing your hand.

Paul: The worst that happens, Karen, is we disagree, or we might have some extra context on the business, which even though in an ideal world, the recommendation is right, we know we can’t do it. That’s fine. What is the most frustrating is when you get, you know, research results, which says, “Concept A has a purchasing [unintelligible 00:20:22] of x%. Concept B has 24%.” I don’t, what should I do? Should I launch? Should I not launch? Why? Who? How? And that obsession with driving action, again, to go back to my boss’s expression of research means nothing unless it sells you more cases, like, the amount of research that is wasted in this industry, that’s done for the sake of it, that isn’t delivered with the right conviction, the right recommendation. And that’s why, you know, as we tangentialize further, I worry about the commoditization of research in our industry, whether that’s AI, which so many people already look at AI and think here’s a way of doing it more cheap, more quick, not here’s a way of doing it better. You know, there was this big wave of self-serve platforms, agile tools, and I’ve used them, and I benefited from them, but now you have some of them saying, we don’t even need the insight team to do it. The marketers can do it directly. You’re literally commoditizing, packaging, and selling research as though you’re selling sausages, you know?

Karen: Yeah. Well, again, as a qualitative researcher, I am used to being commoditized on some level. I mean, again, I’ve been here at Greenbook for three years, so this is kind of my retrospective, looking back, but I remember, when people were saying I’m looking for a moderator as if each moderator was interchangeable. And you know, some of us were like, “Oh, no, actually, I’m a qualitative consultant.” And we—[laugh] I remember tripping up on that more times than not. Like, if you’re looking for a talking head, then I’m not your person, right? And if you’re looking for somebody who’s going to give you some consultative value, then perhaps I am. I’ve not heard commoditization talked about in the larger research scope, right? So, that’s interesting to me, Paul.

Paul: I think, you know, whether it’s qual or quant, there has been a, you know, in certainly my 20-years career, a move away from everything being slow and painful. You know, I remember the days of a quant project would take three months, a simple quant project. Or, you know, you’d commission six focus groups and they tell you it would take two months before you get the result. That, of course, isn’t right. But now you’re having people trying to say, you know, an AI bot is as good as a moderator. No, it’s not. It’s an AI bot. You know, it might get 80% of the way there in the future, who knows, but it will never be an expert conversationalist. You know, you have people talking about big synthetic data—you know, don’t even go and speak to real respondents—who will sell you AI-generated data. And we as an industry need to be prouder of what we do, and stand more firm rather than what I feel like is a bit of a race to the bottom in some ways.

Karen: I love that idea of how the researchers need to change. So, let’s go back to the client side a minute, Paul, because what we need to do as researchers who might deliver a service is one thing, but what client-side researchers need to do is another thing. And I think it all starts with, you know, that taking a look at what the teams are like now compared to what used to be like. So, kind of in your experience, what shifts have you seen? How has the client-side researcher role evolved or changed completely, in your experience?

Paul: I think broadly the size of teams has got smaller. I think there is less, sort of, ivory tower research. There always used to be global teams who’d sit there and spend millions on stuff that no one would ever use. That’s definitely dying a death. The expected ability to talk with finance, with commercial teams, with the sales team, that’s a huge change. You know, I think with smaller teams that we do rely on our agencies, right? But somewhere—and I’ve talked about this a lot in different formats—this weird slave-master thing that clients and agencies have, I’ve never understood. I’ve never understood why, you know, agencies don’t push harder because we as clients need our agencies to push us. We don’t need yes people, right? We need great people with great ideas, with fresh perspectives, who aren’t locked in the business. Because as you said right at the beginning, you can, even as an insider, personally get very locked in your brands. You need agencies to come in and give you that fresh, you know, different perspective. Have you thought about this? “Well, actually, Paul, I haven’t worked on spirits, but I’ve been working on, I don’t know, premium food, and there’s some parallels between”—that sort of external perspective is hugely important. Our agencies are full of incredibly bright people who just sometimes seem to lack a bit of confidence to come and talk to us in the right way. And, you know, that is certainly something I’ve seen changing. When I kicked off my career 20 years ago, all the buzz was about we need to be consultants to our clients, right? That seems to have just stopped a little bit. Now, it seems to be we need to make ourselves as cheap and quick as possible to hopefully win some business. And I can understand why people do it, but I’m not sure it’s the right direction.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. So, you know, thinking about, we have a lot of people in our audience who are, you know, on the agency side. What advice would you have for them if they are… you know, if they’re trying to—I’m not talking about, you know, win your a business specifically, that’s not what this is about, but you know, win the business. Say, you know, there’s somebody who has a history of financial services, and so that seems like natural work for them, but they’re, you know, suddenly drawn to healthcare. Or maybe they’re in healthcare, and they’re suddenly, you know what I would like to take on this CPG project. It seems like category experience is sure helpful, but on the other hand, might also be, you know, kind of detrimental. Maybe breadth is more important. I don’t know. What advice do you have?

Paul: My pers—you know, though the last ten years have been quite alcohol-led, you know, when I went to the consultancy the Forge for a year, I worked on personal care. I worked on charity investment banking. And even though, I mean, you know, [laugh] the listeners won’t be able to see me, but trust me, I ain’t spending a lot on personal care with this face, and you know, I know nothing about charity investment. I don’t have any money; I work in market research. Come on. Even on those two categories, I went into the center of London, into Canary Wharf, where this investment bank was, and they were hanging off my every word. They loved the presentation, the recommendations because what I can do is bring, you know, the ability to convince, the ability to persuade, the analytical rigor. I don’t need to know the category perfectly. So, you know, when I commission an agency, I never look at the slide where they go, “Here’s the clients we’ve worked with.” Half the time because everyone’s worked with the same clients. Everyone will have, “We’ve worked with, P&G, Unilever, you know, Mondelēz,” wherever else it might be. All those big clients are always there, so it doesn’t really matter. It’s the people actually that matter. Because a really good insight person can turn to any category based on, you know, their experience and their skill set. I think personally, if you’ve been in a category for too long, you can become a bit narrow and you lose that sort of external stimulus.

Karen: Yeah, yeah. I love that. And I know we’ve probably talked about a lot of this throughout this, you know, podcast so far, but let’s just kind of go over that. What does make a really good insights professional then, or agency partner, from like a personal qualities as opposed to your resume or who you’ve worked for before? Like, what should be on the, maybe, about me pages of a proposal, for example [laugh]?

Paul: I mean, people—I said earlier that a sense of collaboration is absolutely number one. Being interested is sometimes a very overlooked skill, but you can tell the people who come and are actually interested about what they’re presenting versus the sort of, well, I’m coming, I’ve got to go to the client office and talk through this. Yeah, collaboration. Interest. Obviously, analytical strength. That goes about saying. Communication is so underrated, right? Whether that’s throughout a project, you know, there’s so many agencies—well, not just agencies; maybe I’m getting old, but no one picks up a phone. Like, there’s a huge crisis on a project and someone sends you a carefully worded email. Pick up the phone. Or you’ll get someone in my team, go, “Well, I’ve emailed the agency four times and they’ve not replied.” Phone them. I know that, you know, particularly, you know, your Gen Zs coming through, that’s not their native behavior, but the ability to communicate through a project, the ability to communicate your results in the right way is hugely important. Do you know what I’ve not said? I’ve not said project management or technical expertise, which is the bedrock of what research used to be. I increasingly think that there are two types of researchers. There are project managers who are brilliantly disciplined, you know, time-bound, phenomenal at running these things. They’re rarely the people though that you want in front of the client. And then you’ve got your, I guess, your presenters, your analysts, your people who do the thinking and engage the client. Very often, the skills and the personality type needed to run a successful project are very, very different from the skills needed to engage the client with the right conversation. And you see some agencies who sort of divide that, but there still seems to be this, well, the person who has spent all the time, I don’t know, manually grouping the verbatims, or updating the project Gantt chart every week, is that going to be the same person who can really come in and be a salesperson in front of my marketing director? And I don’t think we should look down on either of those skill sets. They’re both really, really important, but I think it’s a unicorn to have both sets in my opinion.

Karen: Yeah, and perhaps the kind of ideal situation is where both those people are in the room, and you’ve kind of unlocked and honored both of those traits and leveraged them for the big win.

Paul: Whenever I built teams—whenever I built teams, Karen, I’ve always looked to recruit for my personal weaknesses, right? I am not Captain Organized. You know, if it’s not in my calendar or in my inbox, I’ve forgotten about it already. You know, I’m a bit of a clown. But I’m a very strategic, engaging person who, you put me on a stage, I can entertain anyone. I love to have people in my team who are different from that, right, because then we’re not fighting over the same bits of the project. We’re both delivering what’s needed. And I think, yeah, you can’t expect one person to be both of those things.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. So, let’s play a little bit in the future space, right? You know, whether it’s your former innovation hat on, or whether it’s just your years of experience, think out to what client-side teams look like in the future, what this client-agency relationship looks like in the future. How would you like it to evolve? What would be kind of the ideal for you?

Paul: That’s a really great question. I mean, I think we have to look at AI and accept that it’s coming. I think in an ideal world, AI could remove a lot of the boring parts—or at least, the bits that I consider boring—in research, whether that’s—you know, when I was at an agency, a client would send you 30 documents and go, “Right. Read that.” That was hard work. Or to be honest, a lot of agencies just don’t read it. You’ll send them all these business documents, and maybe the grad will read it, you know, the fresher have uni, but no one actually has time. AI now, you put all of that into an AI tool, and it can give you a one-page summary. Data collection, even the basics of questionnaire design, so many of these things AI can help. Basic charting, AI can help. I mean, how many hours have we all sat there on PowerPoint? That’s not adding any value. And I do that. I’m 20 years in, and I’ve had amazing jobs. Trust me, today I’ve sat there several times fiddling about with fonts. We all do it. AI can remove that. I see the insight world to use a potentials word, bifurcating. I think there will be at one end strategists and consultants, and at the other end, there will be quick turnaround data, really, really commoditized stuff. The danger then is if you are in that squeezed middle, right? So AI, I think we’ll see that bifurcation, you know, in the client-side teams grow or decline based on business performance. So realistically, for the next five years, you’re not going to see a lot of growth. If there’s suddenly another boom period and everything’s going well, then that can change, but for the moment, I think it will be tough, meaning we are going to need to find clever ways to speed things up, such as AI. But what we mustn’t ever do is think that AI is better than people. It is better than people at certain things, and it can do certain things more quickly. It’s a little bit like when we went into Covid, the whole world got so excited about online qual and online focus groups. And I’ve used them, and they had a purpose and they’re okay. But they’re not—they’re nowhere near as good. You know, come on. I think ours is an industry—and we’re in early 2025—I must have on LinkedIn seen 30 ‘Here are the top research trends for 2025.’ We’re so desperate to adopt new tools and throw away everything we’ve done before. As I said, some of the best research—and I think it will always be some of the best research—can be a good moderator in a room with six people, right? And we’re so desperate, like magpies, to jump onto the next shiny thing. So, I hope that people will understand that tech will have a place, but the good old fashioned, time-tested research will also have a place.

Karen: Yeah. Well, and I would see your, you know, nothing beats the somebody in the room with six people, and raise you a, nothing better than going into somebody’s home, and sitting down—

Paul: One hundred percent.

Karen: —and sharing a drink with them at their table. You know? Like, that—

Paul: No, I couldn’t agree more. Do you know, the biggest win I had early in my career at Ferrero was based on—we’d spent loads and loads of money on trying to understand why the brand Kinder Surprise wouldn’t grow. Now, Kinder Surprise, unfortunately, is not allowed in the States.

Karen: I was going to say because the whole idea—

Paul: Because it has a toy inside it, which is—let’s not get into that. That’s an interesting choice.

Karen: [laugh]. Another thing that shocks the American when they go overseas for the first time is, you know, the toys inside the—

Paul: Yeah, don’t bite into it. But, you know, we’d done all this research, we couldn’t understand why the brand wouldn’t grow. We then spent, you know, maybe a couple of thousand dollars to recruit some mums, to have like a day with mum, like, you know, picking the kids up from school, taking like—a proper safari, and we started to see exactly what the problem was. You know, Kinder Eggs were like a pound in those days. They’re probably a lot more now. All the other chocolates were 20 pence or a fifth of that. So, the mum or the dad was buying the more expensive chocolate because what they hoped is their child would get the emotional joy from the little toy. And mum or dad wanted themselves to feel good that they were buying something nice. And half the time the kids would open the egg, find the really irrelevant toy that they didn’t want, throw it away, and then just eat the little bit of chocolate. So, from mum or dad’s point of view, they’ve wasted the money, they didn’t get the emotional response they wanted. So, it taught us that it was all about ensuring that shoppers can understand what toys will be in which eggs. That grew the brand by like 30% that insight, just by signposting, if you buy this egg, this is what’s in it. And that was based on a couple of thousand dollars worth of being with some mums and some dads. I could have done a 200,000 dollar UNA and nothing.

Karen: Right, great. Great example. That’s a great example. Thank you. Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff. And yeah, and maybe our future will integrate a little bit more of that across everybody’s workspace because that is really good stuff. And it’s fun and rewarding for the independent researcher who’s helping everybody get in homes, but I think from everything I ever experienced, it was also rewarding for teams that were in attendance.

Paul: What we have to remember is we are not our consumers. I drink whiskey, but I’m not the same as an UK whiskey consumer because I work in an industry, I’ve reached a certain salary and social class level. I’m not the same as the person who has a choice whether he buys the best food or the best whiskey. I’m not the person who’s drinking whiskey on his own on a Friday night. I’m not the person who’s… you know, difficult. And you can’t be that person by reading someone else’s report. I think one thing I’d love—and it’s difficult in the world where we don’t have as much resource—I used to spend at least half—at least one day a month, not in an office, going out to supermarkets, going out to just to observe, to talk to people. When I did my Africa role and there wasn’t a lot of money, I learned more—oh, I could tell you some stories about being in Madagascar, and drinking the better part of a bottle of rum with a group of lads to learn about the category—but I learned more there than I would in any big report. And yeah, if only we could all—we’ve all got lazy. We all like to sit at home. I do. I work from home a lot. I can’t criticize that, but getting out there, seeing our consumers living a day in their lives, that’s more valuable than any AI will [laugh] ever be.

Karen: Yeah, no, that’s great. Great kind of words of wisdom and experience. So, I appreciate that. Paul, I’m looking at my clock and I made a promise that we’d certainly be done by the top of the hour, and I want to be mindful of that, but is there anything that I haven’t asked that you really were hoping we’d touch on today?

Paul: A question I’m often asked is, well, what should we agencies do differently to win with clients, right? And I’ll give you a quick answer to that. Number one is, don’t just chuck us all into a box that says ‘clients.’ I am very different from the next client. You know, my boss and I couldn’t be more diametrically opposed in our styles, so the way an agency wants to work with me, wouldn’t work with my boss and vice versa. Find out. Ask questions. Ask how we work, what’s our preferred working style, how involved we want to be. As I said earlier, number two, recommendations. That’s the absolute, absolute main thing. And then I talk a lot about the spirit of generosity in this industry. So, when that sales guy sends me a cold call through LinkedIn, I’m not interested because I’ve got a thousand, right? That person who’s gone to the effort to go, “Right, this is what we sell. This is how it could help Paul. I’m going to try and package something up to go, right, we’ve used our research to give a little bit of a view on the future of spirits. Can we come and talk to you about it?” The answer then is always yes. Because they’ve showed a bit of generosity, and therefore I’ll give them the generosity of yes, we’ll meet, we’ll connect, we’ll talk. I also think just like giving back a little bit is really key as well. I went into the three or four agencies last year to talk about life as a client because, you know, it needs to be a two-way exchange, I think, in terms of that spirit of generosity. Because we’re all in the same industry. There’s no such thing as client-agency. We’re all inside people. And yeah, as I said before, losing that slave-master relationship would be so critical.

Karen: Yeah. Well, I love all of that as somebody who, you know, spent the majority of their career on that agency side… I don’t want to say side now, you just said there’s no such thing as sides, right? But working in that capacity in the relationships, I appreciate everything that you’ve said, and I’m sure a lot of our listeners will as well. And I hope some of the, you know, brand side—or, you know, brand partners that are in the industry also listening will kind of take that in and just do some reflection on what their view of the relationship is, too. So, if nothing else, you’ve represented a point of view, Paul, so thank you so much for that.

Paul: Pleasure. It’s been really nice to talk to you, Karen.

Karen: You as well. You as well. So, that’s our time today, friends. I just want to thank you again, Paul. Really great to speak to you. Thank you for the yes that you gave me [laugh].

Paul: Pleasure. It’s been a great chat.

Karen: Excellent, excellent. And also many thanks to our audio editor, Big Bed Audio. Thank you for everything that you do to clean us up, to our production team at Greenbook, and also to all of you, our listeners, thank you so much for joining us week after week, and especially for this episode. We’ll see you soon on another episode of the Greenbook Podcast. Bye-bye now.