Coffee break: Two corporate researchers chat about handling their first marketing research project

Editor’s note: Beth Burzic and Lauren Michniacki are consumer and market insights managers at Mars/Wrigley Confectionery, Chicago.

Professional development is an ongoing evolution each of us tackle in our career. We seek out teams that match our skills, passions and – essential to marketing research – curiosity for the world. With an ever-changing market, companies need to move and react quickly. Getting up to speed is key to success in meeting stakeholder needs, as projects don’t have time to slow down when new team members come on board.   

But how do you add value to your new position? What resources should you lean on? And how do you handle your first project (without making too many rookie mistakes)?

While we had years of experience in the CPG industry, both of us joined the Wrigley consumer and market insights (CMI) team new to the marketing research world. One of us came from a finance background (Beth Burzic) and the other from operations (Lauren Michniacki). We recently sat down together over coffee to discuss our transition into marketing research, sharing how we handled our new roles and discussing how we tackled our first projects.

Beth Burzic: Coming from outside the field, what attracted you to marketing research?

Lauren Michniacki: For me it was the blend of facts and creativity. Being an influencer and storyteller for the consumer with behavioral science was so intriguing to me. I’ve always had a love of learning and natural curiosity, which is an asset in this industry. In fact, I spoke to you, Beth, when I was exploring this team at Wrigley as you were also from a non-traditional marketing research background. When you came into your role, what did you do to get up to speed?

Burzic: Honestly, I was a bit nervous transferring from a role in finance to marketing research. I loved my marketing research class in graduate school but didn’t know anything about research beyond that. To get comfortable with my new role, I did some secondary research. It sounds super dorky but the first thing I did was review the notes from my graduate school class and then head to the library to pick up a book on marketing research. The book was really helpful because it showed examples of different business issues and how various researchers tackled the problem. Once I started, I realized I still had a lot more to learn so I took a marketing research class at the Burke Institute, which helped build my tool kit. I also found it helpful to lean on my vendors as they provided a safe zone to ask stupid questions and talk through issues.

Michniacki: When you were starting out, what other ways did you find to add value?

Burzic: Within Wrigley, I previously had roles in finance, customer marketing and category management – so it was great to already have a ton of baseline business knowledge. Quickly I learned it’s valuable to have cross-functional experiences and be the team member that is asking the broad questions as that adds value to the project. My broad business intelligence then gave me confidence to put forward new points of view.

For example, on a club-pricing project, I started with a quick break-even analysis to understand the basics. My teammates hadn’t seen that type of analysis from a researcher before and were pretty excited to talk through the basics together. To me, it was a standard starting point that carried well into my role on the project.

Michniacki: My previous role was an innovation project manager, which gave me a high-level view of every function that touches innovation throughout the life cycle. I was already familiar with what goes into creating and delivering a new product to launch. When starting in CMI, I knew how my research would impact the other functions and what the team needed from me. That allowed me to create a collaborative timeline of my research plan in the time the team required for a launch window. Similar to you, I found having business knowledge gave me the confidence to challenge and collaborate with my teammates. 

Burzic: How did you tackle your first project?

Michniacki: One of my first projects was already in progress as I took it over from a teammate who was transitioning to another brand. It was helpful to have her as my mentor for my first innovation project in CMI. We built a learning plan using her past experiences plus my background on project timeline needs and our innovation processes. It was a great balance of learning my new role while using my past experiences. I also had my mentor sit in a few project meetings during the transition so the rest of the team could feel they were in safe hands. Besides utilizing a mentor, I also did a deep-dive session on all the past research that had been done on this and similar projects to familiarize myself with what we already knew – helping me to not repeat anything! 

Burzic: At what point did you get research results back? How did you share them? 

Michniacki: I leaned a bit on vendors I trusted. With this project we were moving quickly to get feedback from consumers on the direction we were going. Jointly with my vendor I built the objectives and discussion guide for focus groups. After each group, I had them lead debrief sessions with our team. They put together a first-draft summary of what we heard and what it meant from the project. I took that as my baseline and added in additional learnings from past work related to our project. I was able to add my own spin to a great start from a valued vendor.

Michniacki: Tell me more about your first project and how you handled it?

Burzic: The club-price project was my first project and I went in knowing I would need support. I started by RFPing vendors and homed in with a vendor that I liked and felt a rapport with. Once I locked them in and finished the contract, I was open to sharing with them that it was my first project and asked how we could best partner and use their experience, not only on the research itself but also best practices for sharing the results internally.

When the results came back, I spent a lot of time looking through them myself and coming up with my list of questions. I sat down with the vendor to cover my questions and discuss my recommendation. I did the same with my manager to make sure we were aligned with both the results and the CMI recommendation to the project team. I ensured my manager was present for the share-out in case any challenging questions came up – she was there for experience and backup.

Michniacki: Anything you would do differently?

Burzic: I would have shared the results with my main marketing partner to make sure we were on the same page prior to the full share-out. It’s been my experience on my next projects that that rollout of results makes for a better results share-out and team conversation.

Another rookie mistake occurred when I was unclear about who on the team owned the inputs. I naively had a conversation with my marketing partners on who owned what and where the responsibilities lay. Looking back, I should have asked a fellow researcher or manager so ensure the marketer didn’t take advantage of the newbie. Luckily, my marketers were honest and didn’t push all the grunt work on me.