What’cha Drinkin’? with Nikki Lavoi
Editor's note: Automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
Steve Quirk:
Hi everybody and welcome to a long overdue addition of What’cha Drinkin’? I am Steve Quirk, president and publisher of Quirk's Marketing Research Media. My guest today is Nikki Lavoi of Savanta. Hello Nikki, and welcome.
Nikki Lavoi:
Hi.
Steve Quirk:
First question, what are you drinking?
Nikki Lavoi:
Okay, so I thought long and hard about this because for me it's evening and it's a Thursday evening. So I was like, should I, and I'm in France, I'm like, should I have wine? But that just felt a little too cliche. And actually I've been traveling a lot and I just came back from an executive leadership conference at Savanta where I did a fair share of drinking. So actually I could really use a break. So for you, Steve, I brought out very special flower tea. I don't know if you can see, it's the kind that blossoms in.
Steve Quirk:
Oh, that is amazing.
Nikki Lavoi:
It probably looks, it probably looks not very attractive but it's this beautiful flower. So, you put it in the tea kettle. I got a whole set with this clear glass tea kettle, and you put the little flower thing in there and then you pour the hot water and it blossoms. So, I was given this as a birthday gift during COVID-19, and I have not had any occasion to use one until now.
Steve Quirk:
Well, fantastic. That is pretty amazing. I've never seen anything like that, but that's really cool.
Nikki Lavoi:
Yeah, I mean, I think it tastes better than it looks because now it looks a bit like muddy water, but yeah, no, there's a little flower in there. It's gorgeous.
Steve Quirk:
Does the flower then add flavor depending on the flower you put in?
Nikki Lavoi:
Yeah, so it apparently produces like an herbal tea infusion taste in the water. So, it's a special kind of flower that they often grind up anyway to become herbal tea.
Steve Quirk:
That's awesome. Well, I am having, because it's morning here in Minneapolis, I am having black coffee, which is very Midwestern, and it's in my mug I got from my brother Dan, which says, criticism cheerfully ignored because usually when he criticizes me, I just ignore him.
Nikki Lavoi:
And that's how you two still have a very happy, functional relationship as siblings.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah, yeah. It's trying at times, but we fight it out and then we're fine.
Nikki Lavoi:
I hear you, but I'm not listening to what you say, so thank you. Yeah.
Steve Quirk:
So let's talk about, I ran into you in Toronto at Congress. It has been a long time since I had seen you because of COVID-19. Yes. I think the last time was in Edinburgh at Congress then. So that would've been by fall of 2019.
Nikki Lavoi:
Congress is the great uniter.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah. Isn't it though? So it's been a while. I know a lot of things have changed for you. So tell me a little bit about what you've been doing the last couple years.
Nikki Lavoi:
What's funny is that the last couple of months have even been busier than the last couple of years. So we, what is it now? It's October. So, 10 months ago basically I sold my company and then I had a baby and then I had a loss in the family unexpectedly. And then almost two years, two years to the day before I had my second baby, I had my first baby. So, since you've seen me, I went from being a single entrepreneur jet-setting woman to an in a relationship, two kids, no longer entrepreneur because I've sold my business and now I'm an employee. Imagine.
Steve Quirk:
That is a lot of change in a short amount of time.
Nikki Lavoi:
It is indeed, and I keep having to remind myself of that.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah. Well, it seems to me that with COVID-19 it feels like time has totally changed. Sometimes it seems like it's going so incredibly fast and other times it seems like it's so slow, it has completely warped time for me.
Nikki Lavoi:
And I don't know about you, but I was just talking with someone and I was looking at all of the change that has happened and there's a bunch of stuff that happened in 2020, and then there's a bunch of stuff that's happened this year and the same for the person I was talking to. So we were like, what happened to 2021? Did anything happen in 2021 were we just, was it Men in Black zapped from our memories? Because I can't remember much of that year and it was only a couple months ago.
Steve Quirk:
It is crazy. Dan and I were talking about, we're reminiscing about the whole COVID-19 and how once COVID-19 hit, everyone had to pivot and it was like, okay, let's just get 2020 behind us and then we'll find some new normalcy in 2021. Well, we agree it's like 2021 was a complete blur because I think everyone was still pivoting and just trying to figure out the way in the new world.
Nikki Lavoi:
It's crazy. And I think, I don't know how it was in the States really, but it's like France was really just shut down, shut down in 2020. And I think in 2021 it was ping ponging between we're open, we're closed, we're open, we're closed. So I think from a business perspective, you couldn't do much because it wasn't reliable, it wasn't predictable how things were going to go. So you were just sort of grinning and bearing it. Yeah, we're here. We're hoping for the best.
Steve Quirk:
I mean, certainly in the U.S. there's just, I'd say it's more hesitation than maybe even uncertainty, but the uncertainty was depending on where you are in the country as the political belief and how they responded to it. Certainly if you were maybe in California was very different than if you were in Texas and then you had a certain percentage of consumers who were ready to go back and some who weren't. So, which makes it just even more difficult because you, you've now divided everybody.
Nikki Lavoi:
Yeah. And I feel like what a mark it has left on our industry, I'm sure there are many others that have been deeply impacted. I think if you're a quant practitioner, you're like, no change here. But the quallies are like, there's so much change that we've experienced. I mean, at least for me, so much of what we do is still digital. It's still online only or predominantly online and nobody seems to want to go back to that. I was sure halfway through 2021, because we had all these clients that were doing cultural immersion trips around, they'd go to a place for ethnography and they'd send half the team so that they could get to know a market. And we're like, oh, that's definitely going to come back. And it isn't. Oh, here I am with a ringing phone. Yeah.
Steve Quirk:
It will be interesting. And maybe I've heard that the same thing that a lot of the qual is all gone digital and it's not coming back to where it was, but perhaps some point the next generation will go like, hey, what we really should do is we should do in-person quality search where we actually see them face-to-face and it'll be novel to them. So.
Nikki Lavoi:
Yeah,
Steve Quirk:
We'll see.
Nikki Lavoi:
Yeah, I mean, wouldn't be surprised honestly, if that's the way it goes, but, well, we don't have to talk about this in a huge amount of depth but there is a ton of advantages to doing online in terms of the amount of people that you can get into the room. But then there are other people who say there are disadvantages in terms of now you need people who are tech savvy and all this kind of stuff. So yeah, we'll figure that out.
Steve Quirk:
It’ll sort itself out and you know, everything is always constantly changing. Yeah. Let's change subject a little bit. Tell me a little bit why you decided that you wanted to run, and then the second part of the question is if you should be voted in, what is it that you, what's your vision for what you think ESOMAR should be?
Nikki Lavoi:
Oh, man. Can I start with the vision one and then go ?
Steve Quirk:
Sure, you can. Yeah.
Nikki Lavoi:
Well, I think it's kind of connected, right? So I've got sort of four points. Well, first of all, let me just say that the current president who has decided not to run again, which is Kristen, she really did so much. The way I described this to people is she did a lot of what I would call back-of-house-work. She really got the house in order, putting things into place in terms of KPIs and metrics to make sure that we can successfully measure everything that we're doing. And we have a more clear and accurate sense of what ESOMAR the association looks like, probably a little bit what our industry looks like, but certainly what the association looks like so that we can then hone in and say, okay, more of this, less of that and let's go in these directions.
So, I think about it a lot of, she set up lot of the back of house and now I'm hoping to set up front of house, so I'm not going to abandon anything that she has setup in terms of the way we're able to look at and measure things, but there's a couple of things that I really want to do and in my vision statement, I talk about four points. One is that I really want to make sure that we continue to inspire clients. So I've been having loads of conversations with folks on client-side and there's some things that they need from the industry around getting more aligned around data analytics and advanced analytics. We know that that's a need. We know that there's also a need around quality standards and things like that. So those things we understand. But clients as well, people on the brand side, they're really making big decisions. And researchers for a long time have been waiting to be seen as strategic partners rather than just suppliers. And I think now is sort of a really great moment in time because of COVID-19 and because of everything else, we've all had to pick up a couple of extra skills.
We're all looking at how we can take our research further. So I think for me, one of the front of house things I want to work on is inspiring our clients more and developing that relationship and making sure that we're seen as strategic and not just suppliers. The other thing that's a huge topic that I'm seeing all the candidates talking about right now is about getting new talent into our industry. And I specify new talent, not just young talent, because what we're seeing a lot and I'm sure you can attest in North America with the great resignation, is people now just want to find jobs that interest them. They want to find jobs that align with their values or that make them feel passion or make them feel joy. And so there's a real opportunity where we could be seeing people with relevant skillsets, but that have not worked in the research industry before coming over into our work. So how can we position ourselves as an attractive industry where people actually want to come because that the work we do is fun. I know that the work we do is fun, but from the outside, I mean, how many people say, oh, I just fell into this industry, so how can we make it so that it's a deliberate destination for people to wind up?
Steve Quirk:
I was at the CEO Summit, that was a huge conversation, and that's actually, it's needed because of the great resignation is, you know, have to look outside our industry and get creative and who are the people who can fill the positions and have the skillset or the ability to learn the needed skillset. So yeah, big issue for the industry.
Nikki Lavoi:
And I think the CEO, I think talking about the CEO Summit, I think that's a great point in and of itself because so many of the really powerful strong CEO leadership in our industry tend to be folks that have been around the block. I mean, they've got companies that have been going for 25 years, which is also needed and also really important part of the work we do. But yeah, then we need folks like Dana Kim who comes up, who's launched Highlight, and we need other kind of Dave Carruthers who's now stepped aside for Voxpopme. But when Voxpopme came up, it was like he brought this startup mentality to the research industry. And I think if we lose that and if we lose the ability to attract the sort of fresh and smart new thinking, then that's going to affect us for some generations to come.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah. Well, it certainly is a challenge for the industry in, you know, my brother Dan and I were just talking about, it's so interesting that the industry has gotten the amount of players in the industry and the amount of services and products that are now offered to help people understand consumers and insights is, it's amazing. But at the same time, it's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming for I think everybody, both on the supplier side and the client side, because –
Nikki Lavoi:
A hundred percent
Steve Quirk:
In a lot of ways, I call it, I mean, I think if you're in charge of insights, in a lot of ways it, it's could be a golden age because you have all this data internally, and then you've got all these potential platforms you can use and partners out there who can help you to really drive an impact in your bottom line. So yeah, never before, but at the same time, it's overwhelming.
Nikki Lavoi:
And I think all these points are connected. So there's two other points related to why I want to run for president. The second, the third one being I want us to inspire each other at things like ESOMAR Congress, where we meet and have really great and fruitful conversations like the ones that we've had in the past. And the fourth is to inspire the world, meaning make sure that people know what we do, that they don't just think of focus groups as like that one scene from Mad Men or sort of this fictitious, oh, people made up research data or as people who mistreat their data. And I think all of these things actually link back around to exactly what you were just saying about the options in the field are so numerous. And so, you know, far reaching in terms of everything you can do.
And actually, it reminds me of ESOMAR’s new CEO Parves Khan, Doctor Parves Khan, she gave a presentation at a research event in Paris last week called Printemps des Etudes, and she quoted another woman that I know Elaine, whose chief insights and analytics officer, I believe is her title at Reckitt, and the quote that she had up on the slide was basically, I'm paraphrasing because she would've said it much more articulately than I did. But it isn't, do we do this or that, it's and, and the person who succeeds in this industry is going to be, and not just the one, but the people who succeed in this industry are going to be the ones who understand when to use which tools. It's never going to be a, this is the tool you use, it's actually going to be about triangulating data from all kinds of different sources, all kinds of different tools. And in order to do that, we need to inspire each other. We need to have fresh new talent. We need clients to trust us with strategic decisions. So to me, it's sort of a complete circle.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that is a great way to end our conversation, I think. Perfect. We've come full circle, just as you mentioned.
Nikki Lavoi:
We've come full circle. That's right. We've done it. Mission accomplished.
Steve Quirk:
Yeah. Well I want to thank you for taking the time out of your evening on away from your family for a few minutes to chat with me. It's so nice, always catching up with you.
Nikki Lavoi:
I strategically timed this when they were asleep so that we would have quiet time together.
Steve Quirk:
Oh, there you go. Yes. Yeah, well, I've done other ones with these where the kids are in the backgrounds and the dogs are barking. We we're okay with that too.
Nikki Lavoi:
Yeah, that's fun too. Yeah.
Steve Quirk:
That's fun too. But it's so good to see you and good luck on your candidacy, and either way, I think ESOMAR will be in good hands, but we'll wish you the best. So thank you. And with that, we'll talk to you later.
Nikki Lavoi:
Sounds good. Thank you. All right. Yep.