IIeX NA 2019 Conference Series – Kerry Edelstein – Research Narrative

Welcome to the 2019 IIEX North America Conference Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Kerry Edelstein, President and Founder of Research Narrative. Contact Kerry Online: LinkedIn Research Narrative [00:00] Kerry Edelstein, Research Narrative, Live with me at IIEX on the Happy Market Research Podcast.  We do a real quick but yet deep dive in what Research Narrative does. They’re a full-service market research agency.  But enough from me, we’ll let you hear from her. [00:17]   I’m here with Kerry Edelstein. [00:20] That’s correct.   [00:21]   Research Narrative. [00:23]   Hello, happy to be here. [00:24] Yep.  Happy Market Research Podcast.  We are Day 1 of IIEX in Austin. What do you think? [00:29] I literally just arrived, like ten minutes ago.  Gosh, there’s got to be easily like 100 different companies in the research technology space to go look at, and I maybe know a dozen of them.  I’m super excited to check out what’s here and see all the innovative ideas. I came of age in market research as we were making the transition from telephone to online research; so, I love seeing new and cool things and thinking about how we can integrate that into our business.  I’m excited. [00:59]    Yeah, for sure.  Well, you guys have been around for quite a while.   [01:01] Yeah, we’re going to hitting our eight-year anniversary this fall, which is pretty exciting.  It feels like it was just yesterday that we started it but I’m like, “Wow, we’re actually approaching a decade pretty soon.”  It goes fast. [01:11]   It’s a big milestone, honestly.   [01:12] It is.        [01:13] You know the...  So, one of the questions that I ask in the regular podcast interviews that we do is “What is one of the biggest challenges in market research that you face today?”  And usually these are like heads of insights and brands or whatever. So, there’s two things I hear. One of those things, which is very regular, is storytelling. And connecting that to your company’s name, Research Narrative, I think is super interesting, right?               [01:37] And not an accident.  That’s actually why we (1) called in that and (2) came up with the philosophy that we did, which is that...  I was actually working in an online video company, running research and analytics before I started Research Narrative, and this was the number 1 challenge we had.  It’s just literally too much data and not enough people to make sense of what it means and to break it down into a narrative that had business implications and action steps associated with it.  And so, we started this mantra at that job of research has to tell a story. Otherwise, why are we doing this? And so,