In college, I took a course called "Finance for Non-Finance Majors" (I think the department head lost out on his preferred "Finance for Dummies" title). It's a good principle though--we aren't all going to be accountants or marketers or designers, but it can be useful as a small business owner, solopreneur, or anyone who collaborates with these functions to have a working knowledge of some of the principles and tools of other disciplines. 
 
For me, working in consumer research and insights, graphic design is a key complementary discipline. I firmly believe that market research needs great graphic design like a cupcake needs frosting. Great design pulls in your audience, helps you clearly communicate the story and makes the content more engaging.
 
To that end, I often do work with professional graphic designers to help take my decks and reports to the next level. But I don’t always have the time or the budget to do that or frankly, sometimes I just need a deliverable that’s “good enough”. Over the years as an independent insights consultant, I’ve discovered a handful of resources that can make marketing my own business and creating proposals and reports for others more beautiful, more interesting and just overall, more professional-looking.
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​Icons
Something I’ve picked up from working with actual designers is that a few, well-placed icons in a consistent style and color palette can really add that final level
of polish to a report or other deliverable. I use The Noun Project and find it valuable enough to have actually ponied up for a paid subscription (very          
reasonable at $40/year currently).
 
Sometimes icons are purely decorative, but they can work harder too. For example, if you use specific icons consistently throughout a report to represent particular consumer groups, those icons can stand in for text in complicated chart or graphics to make them easily readable.

​Stock photography
There is a lot of terrible stock photography out there. To avoid it, you basically have two choices. One, you can pay for a subscription to a high-quality stock image service like Adobe Stock or Shutterstock. That may be a good option if you need lots of images for commercial use, but it’s not cheap.
 
Alternately, if you just need images occasionally and they don’t have to be super-specific, there are a few great, free stock photo sources. Two that I frequently use are: Unsplash, which has a beautiful, searchable website, and Death to Stock which sends free unique photos out in themed packs via email. Be sure to credit the creators appropriately (each site has their own guidelines).

​Fonts
Here’s what I know about special fonts: not using them can make materials look generic, but using them inappropriately makes you look like a complete idiot. I prefer to risk erring on the generic side, especially since I’m typically dealing with client-facing deliverables (vs. creative marketing output). That said, if you’re feeling brave, you can find lots of free and unique fonts on Dafont.
 
Just remember that if you’re using a non-standard font, there’s a good chance it won’t look the same on someone else’s computer in a document (unless they have also downloaded the same font). When it doubt, send the document as a PDF to preserve fonts.

​Infographics
Here’s an area I would love to grow my own design expertise—creating infographics! There’s a reason information presented in this format gets shared so much online—if done right, it’s a fun and engaging way to communicate data.
 
If I decide I simply must create my own infographic, the best option I’ve found is Venngage. They have a basic selection of free infographic templates that you can play around with online to create a custom version. If you love it, there are also paid subscriptions that give access to all the premium templates as well ($19/month for an individual). If you’re interested in data visualization more broadly, I also suggest you check out Viz-Fest, which is a (free) webinar series on the topic.

Photo editing
If you are working with stock photography (or your own), you’ll likely need photo editing software at some point. If you don’t have the need level or expertise for an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription (e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, etc.), you can stay in the Adobe family with Photoshop Elements (one-time purchase), which is a more basic and user-friendly version of Photoshop.
 
There are a few good, free online photo editing sites as well. I recommend Fotor or Pixlr (the latter also has links on its homepage to free vector editor, fonts, and graphics sites). One of my most common image editing needs is just to reduce the file size of an image, particularly for use in email. The interface could use a little design help itself, but this free Image Optimizer site has always done the trick for me.

​​If you work in market research (or marketing or any related disciplines), I highly recommend that you find an awesome freelance graphic designer or design firm to partner with, if you don’t work for a company with those resources in-house. Working with designers and seeing their creations is probably the best way to build your own eye for design. And for everything else, I hope these design tools and resources can help fill the gaps! 

The 2017 P&G Alumni Global Conference took place this month in Cincinnati, OH with the theme of “Catapult” (though sadly, no actual catapults were involved). It was a fast-paced few days with multiple special events to choose from in addition to the two-day central conference. StartUp Week, Brandtopia, BLINK, and many other events were also going on in Cincinnati that same week so the city was alive with entrepreneurial energy.
 
There was a range of compelling speakers and topics with particularly strong content on change and innovation. Here are three of the key themes from the conference that are broadly relevant (not just for P&G alumni!).
 
1. Not-so-new media
As Kirk Perry of Google shared, “reach is plentiful; attention is scarce.” Digital and mobile were key themes at the conference and Gary Vaynerchuk told us that traditional TV is the most overpriced media out there (except for Superbowl ads, which he feels are actually a good value). Mr. Vaynerchuk would have brands put all their media budgets against Facebook ads (especially long-form video) and digital influencers.
 
While he made some compelling points, I do think there is a fundamental difference between growing a new start-up from zero (the majority of his examples) and the challenge of sustaining and incrementally growing a behemoth existing brand. Digital should clearly represent a larger share of marketing spend than ever before, and for start-ups probably their entire spend, but I think TV still has a role to play for big brands, particularly among certain consumer targets.
 
2. Brands in service
Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed, told us that brand loyalty is being redefined in the digital age to the brand being loyal to and serving its audience (versus the other way around). “Consumers have become gods”, Rishad Tobaccowala of Publicis Groupe stated boldly in his provocative talk. According to Mr. Tobaccowala, it’s outdated to say brands empower or enable people. Instead, brands need to meet and serve people where they are. Personally, I can’t tell you how many brand purpose statements I’ve read that include “we exist to empower consumers…” or “Brand X enables you to…” so I consider that a pretty revolutionary, and humbling, statement.
 
How can brands serve people? Providing experiences was a common theme. A few ideas from Mr. Perry included: providing magical experiences (simplify everything and provide utility), seamless assistance, and immersive experiences (using AR and VR). Andrew Swinand, Leo Burnett Group, also reminded us to always ask, “what human problem are you solving?” and shared some beautiful examples from Samsung, including ‘Safety Trucks’ with screens on the back to see around, a ‘Voices of Life’ app that helps premature babies feel close to mom, and the use of virtual reality to make live theater engaging for deaf people.
 
3. Culture is critical
When it comes to driving cultural change, Nigel Vaz, Publicis Sapient said the most important thing is just to start. Model and encourage the behaviors that will create the desired culture. Mr. Vaz suggested three steps to kick-starting cultural change: build common ground, organize to drive change, and embrace and embed change. A slightly different take on culture came from John Zeally, Accenture, who told us that within a company, you “need to have a culture of cultures, but a single set of values.”
 
Culture must be modeled from the top down, and in her talk entitled “Dare to Serve”, Cheryl Bachelder, former CEO of Popeye’s, challenged us to take the “best test” by asking, “are the people better off because of my leadership?” She encouraged humility and courage, and even love, as part of servant leadership. Bracken Darrell, Logitech, encouraged reducing hierarchy to enhance culture and productivity, saying, “the new model is partnerships. The flatter you can get your organization, the more you activate people.” Mr. Darrell also advocated for doing away with employee surveys, which got an enthusiastically positive response from the audience! 

Each year, Greenbook publishes the GRIT Report, a summary of market research industry trends based on a global survey of client and supply-side researchers. The findings are always insightful and help me better understand which research trends are really in play today and what’s coming next. Here are a few highlights from the most recent report that are particularly meaningful, along with some commentary from my experiences.
 
What really matters in consumer research?

• The number one answer here is “trust in the results”, which covers a multitude of underlying factors. It implies a strong relationship among partners, high-quality sampling and survey techniques, and expert analysis. I would argue that the other highly-rated items: sample/panel quality, proven methodology, and participants’ engagement, are all just drivers of the first.

 
Which trends are hype and which are game-changers?

• According to the survey, global researchers are most excited about automation, big data, and storytelling from the latest crop of market research buzzwords. I agree with automation—as noted in a previous post on industry trends, there’s a place for automating processes that are repetitive or don’t require much interpretation. The trick for smart researchers will be knowing where and how to best use it.

• Buckets of e-ink have already been spilled on “storytelling” recently, but for research specifically, I see it as a cry from the end-users of research to make results more engaging, easy to understand and act on, and sticky for their organization. Specific ways to execute that include: a high level of synthesis in reporting (weaving together multiple data points into a cohesive narrative), the use of infographics and other graphical approaches to make data easily digestible, and the integration of direct consumer perspective (e.g. videos, pictures, quotes, etc.).  

• In the “hype” category, researchers place: AI, marketplaces, VR/AR, and attribution analytics. I can’t help but wonder if AI (artificial intelligence) lands here because people don’t know exactly what it means in a research context. If that option were to be renamed machine learning, I feel like it would shift into game-changing territory. Practical applications include: text analytics and sentiment analysis, algorithm-driven online “qualitative” interviewing, and automated facial coding/emotion analysis.

 
What are client’s unmet needs from research suppliers?

• Number one on the list is “recommending business actions based on the research”, which I think is driven by two factors. One, most supplier-side researchers writing these reports have never worked on the client side so they may not know what an actionable business recommendation really means, or at least, how to frame it in a way that will be compelling within the client organization. Report writing is also typically handled by more junior employees in large research firms. A senior person might swoop in to add recommendations and present the report, but if they didn’t do the deep analysis, are they really in the best position to do that? 

• The second reason for this gap is that many client-side researchers don’t invest in developing the business knowledge of their supply-side partners. If the client is working with a massive multi-national research firm, it frankly may not be worth their time given high levels of turnover. In my previous corporate roles, I’ve trained junior supplier partners many times only to have them be transferred to another business by the time they were getting proficient in my category!

• A good solution to this need is building strong, consistent supplier-client partnerships. Personally, I think this is easiest to accomplish with an independent research consultant (I would say that, wouldn’t I?!) or a smaller, more boutique research firm. There should be a direct correlation between the amount of time a client invests in educating a supplier about their business and the quality of their business recommendations!

 
You can learn more by reading the full GRIT Report (free to download). If you’re in the market research industry, I also encourage you to sign up for the GRIT Panel to participate in future industry surveys and receive advance copies of the reports in your inbox.