Conversations with corporate researchers

We so often hear about the challenges of working on a small insight team. What are some of the benefits?  

I love the diversity of projects I get to work on. One of the things I worried about when I left consulting to come to NPR was whether I would get bored or stuck in a rut. Luckily that has not been the case! On any given day I may analyze ratings for our shows, design a new custom survey that we’ll run in our panel or try to make progress on how we measure our audience across platforms. My brain gets pulled in a lot of different ways and that keeps me interested and engaged.

Do you have any tips for client-side researchers looking to get more attention from the C-suite?  

There are a couple of strategies that have worked well for us. One is bringing our internal clients along with us from the beginning of a project through to the final results. It’s hard for anybody to truly buy in on the results and implications of a project when all they get is a long PowerPoint deck at the end. We try to be in frequent communication with the key users of a study along the way, giving them the chance to shape the scope, get a peek at the initial findings and then plan the rollout to the rest of the organization.

The other approach we’ve had some success with is creating something other than just a PowerPoint deck – ideally something tangible – with the results. In one case this meant creating a small deck of cards that summarized the findings and asked, “How might we…?” questions based on the findings. Our training team used them to facilitate strategic conversations about content and products. In another case we created Sankey graphs that presented data in a new way. Both made an impression.

What excites you about coming to work each day?    

NPR is full of smart, inquisitive people who believe wholeheartedly in our mission to inform and engage the public. Presenting audience findings to journalists who are trained to ask tough questions can be intimidating. But no one ever asks a hard question maliciously or tries to undermine you. We are all just trying to make ourselves smarter and our content more relevant to our audience.


Gwynne Villota will be presenting a session titled, “How NPR is Building a Diverse Millennial Audience” at The Quirk’s Event in Brooklyn, N.Y.