Episode 4: Kelly Garrett Zeigler
Creating Space to be Surprised with Kelly Garrett Zeigler
While companies often approach consumer insights with a certain direction in mind, today’s guest believes strongly in the power of surprises. In this episode, we are joined by Kelly Garrett Zeigler who has two decades of experience in consumer insights, in a career that has spanned across organizations such as Mattel, Vans, Vanity Fair Corporation, and now Pearson. Kelly shares where this intention came from to want to be surprised despite having a direction in mind and explains that the best insights come from “messy humans”. She also talks about questions to drive consumer understanding, the importance of empathy, and the unexpected sensation that accompanies a true consumer discovery. For tips on how to construct a diverse constellation of collaborators, things you can do to establish an insights culture in your team, and some of Kelly’s favorite go-to resources and tactics to stimulate fresh thinking, tune in today!
Episode 4: Show Notes
Key Points From This Episode:
• A creative achievement that Kelly is proud of: bathtub track sets for Mattel.
• The expectation resetting process that Kelly went through when doing this project.
• How the best insights come from “messy humans” and what she means by this.
• What questions Kelly asks to increase her likelihood of stumbling over a surprise.
• Why this product felt more like an obvious rediscovery than innovation.
• How this guilt from overlooking something obvious turns into passion that turns into action.
• How Kelly applied the same energy and approach to her job at Vans.
• Thoughts on how empathy is at the root of consumer insights.
• How Kelly negotiates the balance between interacting with the consumer and fulfilling the other job requirements.
• The challenge of figuring out what’s important to a consumer from a leadership perspective.
• The importance of acknowledging that the consumer is multi-dimensional.
• A tool, trick, or technique that Kelly is almost embarrassed about but works: Looking at photos.
• How logo clash has helped her figure out the role their product plays in the consumer's expression of their identity.
• How Kelly and her team communicate internally the surprises they find to then inspire actions.
• Why Kelly surrounds herself with people that are as different from her as possible.
• How she knows what’s different from her, and avoids blind spots in her diversity circle, personally and professionally.
• A few specific things Kelly has done to establish this insights culture on her new team.
• How Kelly sets goals for a team and knows that they’re on the right track.
• Resources Kelly recommends for anyone interested in insights: Futures Laboratories and WGSN.
Tweetables:
“When you think about an insight where do you expect that to come from? In my opinion, it has to come from messy humans.” — Kelly Garrett Zeigler [0:08:11]
“Even that one person has a lot of value because that one person still represents more. So, I never discount even one experience.” — Kelly Garrett Zeigler [0:13:45]
“Always leave room to be surprised, go where people take you, listen to their real pain points and problems.” — Kelly Garrett Zeigler [0:18:23]
“At the root of it, insights is about empathy which means the bulk of your time needs to be spent listening to and talking to real people so we’re not just talking to ourselves.” — Kelly Garrett Zeigler [0:20:22]
“I usually find myself taken through the most interesting, different paths, learning new things, connecting dots in a way I never would have just if I didn’t have my own personal circle filled with people that aren’t like me.” — Kelly Garrett Zeigler [0:35:24]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Kelly Garrett Zeigler on LinkedIn
Kelly Garrett Ziegler on Instagram
EPISODE 4 [TRANSCRIPT]
“KGZ: Definitely a lot of the work that we do and have done over the years is often making sure that we’re not just thinking about the consumer through like the vertical of the business, like one person touches so many different things. Just this past week, I talked about how a Vans consumer might have an AT&T cell phone, have a kid pushing a Hot Wheels car. People are multidimensional. So when we come to the table talking about what’s important to a consumer from a leadership perspective, we bring those analogies in, like, as a best practice. That’s constant input for the team.”
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:34] JU: Welcome to The Paint & Pipette Podcast. My name is Jeremy Utley, and it’s my job to illuminate the tactics of world-class performers across domains. As a day job, I teach at the Stanford d.school, helping students learn what it takes to come up with ideas. But I’ve realized I need to stay in the classroom learning myself and this podcast is my classroom.
[00:01:23] MH: Hey! I’m Marcus Hollinger. I lead marketing and creative at Reach Records, an Atlanta-based independent record label. I’m also co-founder for Portrait Coffee, where we are seeking to reimagine the picture that comes to mind for folks in specialty coffee. I’m so excited to pull up my desk alongside my good friend and fellow learner, Jeremy, and I think y’all are going to love what we have for you this see.
[00:01:55] JU: We’ve got some amazing stories on deck, and we can’t wait to dive in and learn alongside you.
[00:01:59] MH: So grab your pipette and your paintbrush, and let’s make something beautiful together.
[EPISODE]
[00:02:08] JU: Today we talk with Kelly Garrett Ziegler about her two-decades long career in the category of consumer insights, and a career that spanned across organizations from Mattel, to Vans, to Vanity Fair Corporation to now Pearson. Kelly shares her insights about the importance of surprises, questions to drive consumer understanding, and the unexpected sensation that accompanies a true consumer discovery. She talks to us about tips to construct a diverse constellation of collaborators, as well as your favorite go-to resources and tactics to stimulate fresh thinking. We were thrilled by this conversation and we think you will be to it.
As we’re sitting here with our dear friend KGZ. Kelly, so good to have the chance to share your story with folks. You’re an amazing creative practitioner with some amazing experience. It’s a delight to get to be with you. I want to start with a question that we asked everyone, and hopefully it brings you back in time somewhere. I’m curious to know about a creative achievement that you’re proud of. What’s a specific creative achievement that you’re proud of?
[00:03:27] KGZ: One?
[00:03:28] JU: Well, let’s start with one and you can give us more.
[00:03:31] MH: Yeah, like the most exciting creative achievement that you can think about right now. First one that comes to mind, don’t edit, just give it to us.
[00:03:40] KGZ: All right. Maybe this one comes to mind. It’s from back in the day, but very relevant because I’m a mom. Back working with Mattel days, we spent a lot of time studying kids, and that meant spending time in real life messy homes all over the US with folks just the day-to-day living. This product, we like co-developed, its idea of like bathtub track sets. So ultimately, like a track set that kids are playing with in a bathtub so that moms can have more time to themselves to relax just a little bit while the kids are in a tub. It was an insight that kind of came out of the most surprising place, nothing we were expecting to find. Being a mom myself now, that one really, really resonates.
[00:04:24] JU: Okay. Wait. What do you mean when you say nothing we expected to find? Like set the context. What were you expecting? What did you go there thinking you might discover? Because we always kind of come in with hunches. Put us in your mind prior to the moment of insight and then let us know how did the insight develop.
[00:04:40] KGZ: Yeah. W we expected back in the day, so this was kind of to put a little bit of context in and some of it’s still true today. Like kids, you think one of the biggest pain points is like how to get them outside, how to get them away from all of their like mobile devices or technology in general. We had a lot of hypotheses or thoughts about like, one, how are they engaging in that space? What could we do potentially as a business to help get them out into that space more? Because we thought there’s a lot of good in the world that could kind of be done in that realm. But instead, we found ourselves spending a lot of time in whether small, big, messy, wet, like bathrooms, where we see like hearing moms just saying, “This is like the one piece of time that I actually have to myself. What could I do to keep my kid in this tub longer, or make them want to get –” it’s just not a place like never would have expected I’d spend as much time like in people’s bathrooms as we did, or that there would be something about like a safe haven, not just for the kid, but for like a parent to get a little bit of like reprieve.
For me, that always did as an example. I wasn’t a parent at the time, so I could not relate on a personal level to that at all. But it was one of my first experiences early on, just to be like, open because you really never know where you’re going to spend your time wherever there’s an opportunity and where you could be surprised.
[00:05:57] JU: What was kind of the expectation resetting process like? Because I mean, sounds like you started this project thinking it’s about getting out of doors. And then somehow you said, I found myself in bathrooms. I mean, I imagine that you weren’t like smuggled or kidnapped, right? You’re like a willing adult who’s a part of the equation here. How did you go from trying to get out to allowing yourself to be sucked into the bath? What was that expectation realignment process?
KGZ: How it started with, even though we kind of knew or thought we knew where we wanted to go or where the opportunity was. We still wanted to be surprised. Being surprised meant, like organically just when you spend time with people. Having them walk us through, like where are they spending their time, where are their kids engaging and just really going wherever that truth, or that person’s truth would take us. It was interesting after a few weeks, multiple homes, we found ourselves in bathrooms. And then, not at all, like I said, a place where you’re supposed to be. It wasn’t a one off. It was genuinely something that like multiple people kind of kept pointing as to like this one very unexpected place. That happened to be a place where kids were engaging with like little Hot Wheels cars, like our product at the time and it’s just a complete, unexpected place.
In fact, a lot of us had the assumption like you wouldn’t want to put a little car in a tub¸ won’t it rust or won’t something happen like it shouldn’t have. It’s not a place we were even advocating for like the product to be used, but kind of it was. To answer your question, we found ourselves there. I found myself in a lot of bathrooms just because I didn’t want to go in just following my assumption. I wanted to go where people really are. That’s how you get surprised.
[00:07:32] MH: That’s just awesome. There’s something you said that just slipped out and grabbed me. I just wanted – I just want to ask about it. You said we knew or we had a direction, but we wanted to be surprised. Can you tell me like at least for our listeners, like where does that come from? Especially in a business context to have the reflex or have your attention drawn away to say, “We wanted to be surprised?”
[00:07:59] KGZ: You know, it’s like an intentional choice. I mean, it’s kind of hard to say, but I found myself whether you have worked in insights for the last 20 years and literally just had this conversation with like a brand-new team now. It’s like, when you think about an insight, where do you expect that to come from. It has, in my opinion, it has to come from messy humans and messy humans are influenced by many different things. There’s what’s happening kind of culturally that could influence and that’s like, in the instance, way back in the Mattel days, cultural noise or cultural signals were telling us, like there’s something going on where people are spending too much time inside. They need to get outdoors, and there’s benefits. That’s what happens when you kind of start looking at culture or trends in that space.
Then there’s also, you spend time with people, you look at how they’re engaging with your product, with your service, with you as a human. I think this applies to business, as well as like everyday life. You look at how they engage with what you expect or like who you are, what they think about you. And then there’s a behavior, looking at what do people actually do. All those things are sometimes related. Sometimes they’re all over the place. But I think what I’ve learned over the last 20 years and something I take to heart personally and professionally is that the richest insights, the richest surprises, especially businesses that want to be disrupted, people that want to push outside their norms are when you’re open to really seeing. And you expect to be messy, so you go in looking for the surprise. And then also, I have the attention span of a five-year-old. So for me, if I’m not able to look for where it’s messy, it’s like, what’s the point? If it’s obvious, why are we here?
[00:09:36] MH: You’re bored.
[00:09:37] KGZ: Yeah.
[00:09:38] MH: Because I’ve broken a rule and I think my question might have taken us pretty general. I want to come –
[00:09:46] KGZ: Knock yourself out.
[00:09:48] MH: [Inaudible 00:09:48] is crazy. Why would you ask that? But I’m sorry, [inaudible 00:09:52]. Let’s come back to this story. You want it to be surprised. Surprises are richest. Well, how did this surprise payoff, right? Like what happens next.
[00:10:02] KGZ: You have this surprise going back to like the tub tracks way back in the day. It resulted in a brand new product that was able to occupy like a different space in a different room a different play pattern, a different consumer behavior opportunity that didn’t exist. We were not developing track sets to be leveraged in a bathroom. It was completely novel. I think that was an example of like a category extension that was just unexpected. That had a really tangible benefit, so we got our product in a new place with the same consumer in a different way. That’s a gold star for what we really tried to do like in that instance. So it opened up a brand new opportunity.
[00:10:45] MH: That is awesome. I’m so tempted to want to ask about some crazy bathroom stories. But I think it would be –
[00:10:53] KGZ: I’ve seen a lot of very strange things working in insights over the years. Like when you wherever people want you to go, and the brands I’ve worked for –
[00:11:00] JU: But hang on. One thing – I’m going to seed the question and then I’m going to ask you a question, so you can have in the back of your mind. When we said we wanted to hear about a creative achievement, you said only one. My hunch is that there’s others. That’s the second question. The first question is, what was the question that you asked when you went to someone’s home, you thought you were going to go outdoors, you got redirected towards a surprise? Like you can’t walk in and say, “Surprise me.” That doesn’t work. That’s way too broad, right? You also can’t walk in and say, “Why don’t you go outside more?” That’s way too narrow. What was the – I just love to know, for somebody who’s wanting to increase their likelihood of stumbling across the surprise, what question did you ask to get there?
[00:11:44] KGZ: Yeah. So for me, that usually starts with the Show Me, so that I can be silent, and I can go where person wants me to go. I think in this instance, one of the first questions was like, show me the last place you played where you really had a lot of joy. That was an example, probably not this specific question, as I dig back in my old brain. But it was definitely the show me so that you can literally physically see in space where people are, and then grounding it in like a really the last time you felt and kind of insert the emotion, so most joy. And for that instance, it was asking the kids to do that, which is something that’s like little kids that was very approachable. But then also doing the same thing with parents, like, “Show me the last place your child play where you had joy.” It was interesting. That’s one of the ways how parents led us into bathrooms, because it was something that was interesting and appreciative for them to get some of that like quiet alone time while your child is like safely contained. But then the kid was also having like a really good experience. That was fun. So the intersection of the two, but it was a show me.
[00:12:52] JU: Again, I want to get to the second accomplishment, or the third or the fourth, because I need to get them. But just on this story, tell us about the inception, or conception. I know what the right word is of the bathtub track. When you’re in the bath, you said it’s after weeks, many people have eyes in the bathroom. Is it like a slow hunch that’s developing? Steven Johnson talks about a slow hunch, right? Was there a moment where it’s like, “How did the idea to extend into the bathroom actually come?” Because it’s not – like looking back, it seems like, “Oh! Totally. That’s just like we put Legos together.” But a lot of times what I feel is, it’s discovering a Lego that I did, and then kind of forcing it in. What was that moment? You remember it?
[00:13:36] KGZ: I mean, I remember a few things stand out to me. One is, the first time you see it, you’re like, “Oh! That’s interesting.” I wouldn’t have expected that. And even that one person has a lot of value, because that one person still represents more. I never discount even like one experience. Again, that goes back to being surprised. There’s other people that person represents. By the time you get to a very, it’s not even like the second person. But as you see very different people with different stories, different experiences, different socio-economic backgrounds, different like – they’re very distinct. Still kind of coming back to like this common point. That’s when it’s like, “Oh! There’s something really here. There’s something that’s transcending just this one experience.” I guess the diversity of folks who are kind of coming to something common, maybe they’re doing it for different reasons, but they’re still kind of coming back to this point.
And then, it is, we reached this collective moment of like, “Why did we not think of that? This feels like the most obvious thing in the world, of course.” That’s usually I felt like that’s when across different teams, whether it’s marketing product, everyone we’re like, “Yeah, of course. Why didn’t we know that? Some of the people even have kids. It’s like, we just didn’t think about it. So yeah, that’s how I would answer that question. That diversity of folks, the distinction of them, and then it felt the gut part of you just felt so obvious.
[00:14:58] JU: In a way, it’s weird. It’s almost, like I mean, I haven’t thought about this way before, but it’s almost like – it goes from, “I don’t know the answer, so it’s past tense.” It’s like – you know what I mean? It’s not even like a new idea. It’s like I’m discovering something that I should have thought of before. And in that sense, it’s a past tense realization, almost.
[00:15:20] KGZ: Everything has felt that way. It’s just like, yeah, it’s always been there. We just now like rediscovered it. You almost feel guilty. It’s not an innovation. It’s just like – we needed to develop for this thing that’s always been there, and to somehow, we didn’t make the space for it. But it did feel obvious like we had – and also, the energy kind of eternal because we have to do this, like we have to do this.
[00:15:42] MH: For sure, this wasn’t like the first breakthrough moment that you had. But the way you said it, we feel guilty, right? It doesn’t feel like an innovation. I guess, maybe specific to this moment like, well then, what happens when that guilt hits. What else are you thinking in that moment?
[00:15:58] KGZ: A few different ways I would answer that from just being an insights professional. It just makes you have this humble appreciation for, get your own biases out the way. And it like really does reaffirm the importance of yes, you have an idea. But it makes you wonder like how many other good ideas do we potentially miss out on because we would like to laser focus as a business on making the assumption to solve for X. There’s a lot of pressures and realities that drive people to that, like timelines, cost, whatever. But a little bit of that guilt is like – there’s so much richness that when you just make the space, from the consumer perspective.
And the other piece of guilt is like, it feels so obvious. You’re like, “Why did we not do this before? Why? Why?” I would say that’s the other components. So two different layers of guilt. But ultimately, what’s good about that, it really does, like inspire action. One, it makes us take it very seriously. It helps the inside of a business move faster toward like developing an innovation because there’s so much passion behind it. Because you can tell when something’s really rooted in a genuine like consumer need, and a different type of excitement kind of happens when it’s something that you scan the market, like you don’t really see it existing yet. Versus, a lot of times, you’re iterating, improving. But something like novel just gives you a different type of energy, because it doesn’t happen all the time within a business, especially established businesses.
[00:17:15] MH: I like that. You said that guilt turns into passion, which leads to action. And I think, maybe Jeremy already seeded the question. But I guess, so then what, what was sort of another action or made this inspire momentum for you or did this leap into another project where you applied that same energy, or maybe there’s another story where this applied?
[00:17:40] KGZ: Yeah. I would say, fast forward, multiple years and to like a different company. So before my current company, I was advanced, I think you all may have had the pleasure of talking to some of my like former colleagues there too. But some different examples that come to mind, again, like being surprised. Working at Vans, I spent a lot of time in skate parks around the world, or various random places, wherever a skater wants to go, keeping this [inaudible 00:18:07] I won’t talk to. Or about, like where all those places were. But again, like an audience that so many people felt we have a lot of understanding about, just because the culture of the business. But again, always taking the lessons learn multiple years before from Mattel. It’s like always leave room to be surprised. Go where people take you listen to their real pain points and problems.
And fast forward, there’s a project underway that is really about how to get more life, I’d say out of a product that they love, which happens to be a shoe. What can make that shoe more durable, better for them as they’re trying to escape. But that was really born out of the same thing, like spending rich time with people, being surprised, and like whatever assumptions we had about skaters. Some of those assumptions weren’t true, and it led to like developing a different type of product.
[00:18:55] JU: That’s cool. I wonder about what you said, been in insights for 20 years. And yet, I’m sure my assumption is wrong and I’m not sure what my assumption is. But tell me about, you said, you’ve got to make space, you’ve got to leave room. How much time is actually spent in the bathroom at the skate park versus like in email, in PowerPoint? You know what I mean? Because like, one of my assumption is, somebody who’s in insight should be spending all their time in the world, and I doubt that’s true. I wonder like, how do you feel about it or how do you think about that? And again, that’s all [inaudible 00:19:29]. As Marcus digs, that’s a super general question. But maybe can you tell us about a time, to maybe get more specific to push myself. Can you tell us about a time you felt the tension between the need to be in the market versus the pull to do other things and how you resolved it?
[00:19:43] KGZ: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a tension I’ve lived through every single company and being that my roots have always been like deep empathy and have had the ability to touch. When I say consumer insights, even to just for people that are listening, that is also a broad term that encompasses many, many different things. But at the root of it, it’s all about empathy. I do believe empathy can be gleaned in different ways. So some of it is, a lot of it should be in field, spending time with people. I feel there’s been so much evolution in the research world where even like what we’re doing now, we can use digital or we can use Zoom. There’s different ways of engaging, but they’re at the root of it, insight is about empathy, which means a bulk of your time needs to be spent listening to and talking to real people so that we’re not just talking ourselves. And it is a constant tension within the business, because we’re running the business. Too much of my day is probably spent in emails now, but what I would say is, I have a team, and we want to make sure that that team is comprised of folks who are touching all of these different pillars.
A team of folks who was only studying culture. What are we hearing? What are we seeing on at a global scale? In some instances, we work still with real people, but they’re like trim spotters, who folks we hire to be like on the ground, in the street, taking pictures, talking, telling us like what they’re seeing that surprising and shocking them and what that means. Then there are the people who are more closely related to I’d say, like user experience where they are – I work closely with those teams, different places, whether they managed by me or not, either way, within an insights perspective. Spending time actually with people in their homes, interacting with products, giving us feedback, failing fast. Like very much, everything I think about in the realm of design thinking.
Then we have our insights market research professionals who are also thinking about consumers at an aggregate level. But what really the magic is, is that we all have to spend time coming together. And in most of our meetings, having a picture of a real person that we’ve interacted with saying, that at the end of the day, we’re doing this in service of these personas, these people, these audiences is critical. But in my ideal world, I would spend all day just talking to people. Over the years, that hasn’t been able to be what I get to do. But my team, yes, yeah.
[00:22:03] JU: It’s tough, right? It’s tough.
[00:22:05] KGZ: It’s hard.
[00:22:05] JU: Walk us through. So to me, I would love to hear about a meeting where insights were shared across those disciplines. I mean, you talk about culture, trendspotting, market research, user experience. Can you tell us about a moment and I’ll give you the line. One of my favorite books is called Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson. He references the study by Kevin Dunbar of McGill University. He’s now at Dartmouth, but he conducted one of the most famous studies of science labs. What they discovered was, as Johnson puts it, he just puts a beautifully small quote and he says, “The insight didn’t take place under the microscope, but at the conference table.” It’s actually where researchers, it’s these moments where researchers come together and share the questions and the stuff that’s not working out. And he speaks actually there at length about – or maybe it’s in Dave Epstein’s Range. I think he references the same study but –
[00:23:02] KGZ: I love that book. I’m reading that right now. It’s so good.
[00:23:04] JU: It’s the best, right? He talks about, maybe you’ve seen this part. He talks about how the teams that were able to break through faster, Dunbar actually studied multiple teams that were trying to do the same thing. He, under vow of silence, wasn’t able to share. But he saw one team breakthrough, like in an afternoon, and another team spin its wheels for months. And he said, the only difference was the breadth of analogies, the more diverse team was able to draw from enable them to break through very quickly. Whereas the homogenous team spun their wheels because they lacked the range. I mean, obviously to the point of the book. Anyway, all that say, that’s kind of a little bit – I’m hopefully giving you time to think. Can you tell us about one of those moments where the breakthrough didn’t happen in the street, so to speak? It happened because of the team working together.
[00:23:51] KGZ: Yeah. I mean, an immediate example that comes to mind, and I think about – I often come back to empathy, the foundation of what helps drive when we’re – I’ll say in this instance – well, l’ll give you the example and then I’ll kind of come back to that point. This was back at my days in advance, and one of the questions that was a big meaty question was without, I guess, giving too much away. We wanted to understand our brands position and skate leadership. It’s a huge meaty question. We spent months doing very kind of getting to your point of interdisciplinary perspective. We spent a lot of time trying to understand one, what are dimensions of leadership in and even outside of like what we were trying to investigate? Because that’s a big word, could mean a bunch of different things. Like, what does it really mean? Where have we seen different companies, different brands actually breaking through?
My vantage point as being seen as like the best-in-class consumer experience. Definitely a lot of the work that we do and have done over the years is often making sure that we’re not just thinking about the consumer through like the vertical of the business, like one person touches so many different things. Just this past week, I talked about how advanced consumer might have an AT&T cell phone, have a kid pushing a Hot Wheels car. People are multidimensional. So when we come to the table talking about what’s important to a consumer from a leadership perspective, we bring those analogies in like as a best practice. That’s constant like input for the team.
[00:25:18] MH: You said, people are multi-dimensional. Even if there’s just one analogy, was there one analogy from the scrappy that you could share? Maybe even just thinking about that person that wears Vans, has AT&T cell phone. Was there an analogy that we could hang on?
[00:25:39] KGZ: Oh! Let me think. An analogy that relates to leadership. Let me come back to that. I can’t think of like one specific analogy other than to say, or maybe one that we would, in somewhat references. Oftentimes, in one category, this is an example of that. I would leverage like why empathy is so important, and a company that used to have very strong leadership perspective, and a different category is Victoria’s Secret. Victoria’s Secret pretty much like dominated one particular – like when you thought of like lingerie, and you thought of that Victoria’s Secret come to mind. But I think they also, over the years have been completely disrupted by other brands, like if you think about Vince, or you think about ThirdLove, because they took a perspective of, we’re not trying to think about a woman only or a person as they’re only wearing lingerie. We’re thinking about like the whole person. What is their complete lived experience? Who do they want to be? How does that show up in culture? What are they doing?
Those would be some examples that we would – actually, I leveraged a lot. And even from a leadership perspective from Vans, do you want to compare yourself to Nike? Do you want to compare ourselves to some other experience that when we think about what really matters to a person? I think those are just examples of trying to tap into, at least when we come to conversations, when we’re talking about the consumer, reminding people brands get disrupted, because they don’t think about a person holistically. Victoria’s Secret and ThirdLove have blown up very quickly compared to how long it took Victoria’s Secret to potentially get to a leadership perspective. But I think that’s one example.
[00:27:12] MH: Yeah, that’s awesome. It almost sounds like just using analogies can almost be a springboard to developing a bigger picture, to then gather more data. Is that kind of what you’re saying?
[00:27:24] KGZ: 100%. The reason why I bring those examples up, because it really does frame even the question for us. Vans was about skate leadership, but that meant, how do you really stand out to a consumer, not just from the products that they’re buying? But you mean something to them culturally, they’re a brand that you want to be a part of, like your identity to some different ways. That’s why looking to other brands that quite frankly, there’s no reason from business perspective, like you just need to be thinking about Fintie all day long. But for us, it’s important, because these are brands that are important to people, because they touch on – as I say, like a broader range other than just how they interact with like one product. It’s touching more on the entirety of their lived experience. From a consumer perspective, that’s really important context, because that also allows us to understand what’s important to people, where our brand can show up. And then ultimately, as we get down to some of our specific questions, whether it’s a product or a different service. How do we want to show up? Aand when we innovate, what are we really trying to innovate for? It should always be in service of the real person. And that gives us room to even innovate different business models or be again, going back to the being surprised.
[00:28:34] JU: I want to shift gears and go maybe practical personal, not like emotional personal, although we can go there if you want. But practically speaking, I’d love to hear if you’ve got a tool, or a trick, or a tactic or a technique that you feel, I don’t want to say embarrassed of, but like, it’s something that you feel like this is probably kind of weird, but I do it. That if you saw it in a book by a Harvard professor or something, you would walk around going, “See, I’m not crazy.” Do you have?
[00:29:10] KGZ: Yeah. There is one. There is one actually. I like to look at photos, and whether it’s an image from magazine, whatever it could be. If there’s something about when there’s no words, just really looking at an experience and trying to draw as many conclusions as you possibly can. I know I learned that from – I picked that up from someone, but it really has been like a little tool that’s been important to me, like in general. And how that’s played out at other companies is, like Vans for example. We would hire photo journalist to literally just go around the world, stop a person that was wearing dance shoes, take a photo. We would take those photos from around the world, come back to some different meetings and really just look at the picture. And in looking at the picture, see what surprised us, like what could we learn or infer about a person with no words. That’s been like one of the best practice for me just on a personal level, but even professionally to say, if I just stop all the noise, what stands out? And try and guess, what does that mean. It’s kind of corny, but it’s been something that’s been really valuable to me.
[00:30:18] JU: I love it. I love it. We like tools like this.
[00:30:22] KGZ: I mean, it’s so impactful. Especially if you work for a brand that – and some folks, we’re fortunate enough. It’s interesting, I’m not in the situation now. But previously, I’ve been fortunate enough to work for brands where you can overtly see if someone’s wearing your stuff. That’s really interesting and something people often take for granted. Even if you’re too shy to talk to a consumer, you can look at them, like observe. There’s so much richness to that. Like, what patterns are you seeing?
[00:30:50] JU: Can you think of a learning or an insight that struck you through that practice?
[00:30:55] KGZ: Oh, yeah. One is like a very basic one. But we would often have conversations around, how often is a person like head to toe in a brand? Very rarely do you see that., so that’s interesting to say, like, “Well, then, what role do you play in how they express their identity?” Especially when you see, I call it like logo clash, when you have like your competitors that you are day in and day out, trying to fight against still shared firm, and you see one person like wearing all of you at one time. It’s like, how then do we like compliment each other versus not? So it just opens up a lot of different interesting possibilities. But I mean, that’s a basic one.
[00:31:34] JU: That’s the observation point. Tell me about a logo clash moment that you go, “Oh! Now, I know this.”
[00:31:40] KGZ: Yeah. I think just using an example of a person is not necessarily head to toe and brand X. That means, what role do we play? How do you be – a question becomes, how then do you become a centerpiece that is the loudest part of that expression when you cannot take for granted that they want you to be a part of their entire life presentation? There are still ways. It creates the question like, “How do you stand out? How do you stand out for an individual? What does that really mean?” That’s interesting. It just automatically gets into a bunch of different assumptions like, to what degree do they want a brand to be an expression of who they are or do you want to seed into the background? But it’s just been fascinating, like a whole reframe about how do we want to show up?
[00:32:25] MH: One thing that makes me curious in that practice, going back to just this thought of being surprised by what you see. As an insights professional, who’s been doing this for 20 years, and is really good at this, if you can be surprised by something, then I’m sure that means that your team may be surprised. I’m just really curious, what role has communication played? How do you then internally communicate the surprises that you find to then inspire actions?
[00:32:57] KGZ: I mean, it definitely all starts with even creating a culture where people know that to be surprised is welcome. Sometimes, over the years, you can start feeling a bit almost like down on yourself. To your point, is that from an insight’s perspective. It’s almost as though you start to expect, like you should know, you spend so much time with the consumer. There’s almost like this – there has to be like a sense of humility, and that is like – I’d say more of like a cultural component that’s been really important to bring into the teams, is that it’s a good thing to always be open and that you will never know more than the person that you’re encountering. Because that’s the first time you’ve spoken to that individual. But I definitely say like it’s a muscle that we’ve had to build over the years. Sometimes, that muscle is a bit counter to the culture of like a company at times.
But it is really, really important for us to even create living spaces where we are documenting how are we surprised, and then taking the next step, like, “What does this mean?” And then the next step of like, “How are we seeing that expressed?” That can be expressed in different ways, whether it’s a marketing campaign, whether it’s competitive product. But whatever the case is, that’s one way where we start training our teams to connect the dots. But it all starts with, for me, I like to set the expectation because I take it personally. But certainly, for the team, like yeah, you should be surprised. To me, we’re doing something wrong if we are not constantly learning something new, which might mean, we need to talk to different audiences, different people, whatever that may entail.
[00:34:25] MH: You make this all sound so intuitive, right?
[00:34:28] KGZ: It’s hard.
[00:34:30] MH: That’s what I was going to say. It must be, right? There’s sort of like that the curve of expertise. As a listener, I’m sitting here like, “Oh! I’m getting ready to change my major and get into insights.” But I think that only means it’s much more difficult than I understand. You talk about like muscles, right? You said this is a muscle that you got to learn to workout. Number one, my buddy Jojo says he’s excited as I am about what you’re saying. I’m curious, what are some of the other, let’s say workouts that you do? Or maybe to phrase is it another way, what are some of the ways that you feed your muscles? Whether that’s resources, books, podcasts, TV shows, artists. How do you sort of keep yourself in shape to do this work?
[00:35:12] KGZ: Yeah. There are few pieces on a personal level I push myself to— This is from working at insights, but just a personal value. Surround myself with people that are as different as possible from me. Because I usually find myself taken through the most interesting, different paths, learning new things, connecting dots in a way I never would have just if I didn’t have like my own personal circle filled with people that aren’t like me.
Then that also feeds into from an insights perspective, I’m very, very conscious of our team. Who are we talking to? Where are we getting information? A good practical example would be, even if our businesses, let’s say, have a footprint globally in terms of where we need to dominantly sell or whatever the case is, it’s still important for us to look across the globe in very different markets to understand people. So for us, whether we’re – I’ll give a small example, whether or not we have some brands have played a larger role in China, whether we do or not, I’m always still looking across the globe, across different regions to understand people. I think that’s like the first practice, is make sure like you’re expanding your net wide. That’s really important.
[00:36:22] JU: Can I ask a follow up there? I wonder how you know, like you said, “I surround myself with people who are as different as possible, connecting dots, but I couldn’t have. My circle hasn’t filled.” How do you know what’s different from you? I mean, not to get too literal. But do you have a checklist? How do you know there’s an open position in the diversity circle? You know what I mean? Because I think that’s – we have blind spots we aren’t even aware of.
[00:36:46] KGZ: Yeah. I mean, that’s a great push, like how do I know. There’s some – it’s funny. Like I remember going through some training at one company and it struck with me. I was doing it before, but when she kind of laid it out, and her name is Amber Cabral, and she laid it out in this one particular way. It was like, “Think about who you are. Get a piece of paper, write down the attributes that are most salient to you, whatever that means. Then think about the people that you spend, the five people you spend most of your time with. Then ask yourself, how are they different from you in terms of their educational profile? If you went to college, did they go or did they not go? If you think about like your ethnic identity, like how different are people from you there?” As a person of faith, like someone who has a very different religious view. Or even some of my friends are like atheist, even though I have a very specific faith. I think about even industries that I’ve worked in and making sure friends are very different.
My husband and I, completely different in terms of what we think about day in and day out. But for me, I kind of go through that personal checklist just to see like socioeconomic diversity, political diversity, religious diversity. And then, certainly then, the baseline that holds us all together, I would say, though. Are we able to communicate and disagree with humility? And uplifting each other, like that is important from my personal perspective.
But then from a business perspective, I bring that in as well to say, how are we ensuring that all of these voices are being listened to? Because in the business, there’s a pressure to do research sometimes quickly. Quickly may leave some voices out. How do we build in space to slow down and to even adjust our designs to making sure that we’re getting that diversity represented? That’s really, really important. That’s both personal and that’s my, The Kelly checklist.
[00:38:32] JU: No, no. It’s good. I’ll bring it to a head as we close. This will be the last question, I think, unless Marcus has or Jojo has a final word, or Judah, either one.
[00:38:40] MH: Oh, yeah. Maybe Judah’s first word would be –
[00:38:43] KGZ: Research, research.
[00:38:45] JU: I was going to say, KGZ. Just bringing this together, you’re in a new role. You just joined a new organization. You’re talking about creating space. You’ve talked about creating a culture where it’s okay to be surprised. Can you tell us? Can you get us two or three specific things that you have said or done to establish that insights culture in your new team?
[00:39:10] KGZ: Working on it right now, but it all starts with number one, the question, the kind of we were just talking about is like, who are we listening to? That’s like my very first question. And where are those voices coming from? The second is, ask a lot of questions to kind of get a dimension. I’m at a company that is now thinking about learning day in and day out. My question is like, what is the culture of learning? What has it been? What do we believe it will be? What are the different dimensions of what learning is? Learning for the sake of what for whom? That becomes like the foundation for us to ask like richer questions and allow us to be able to talk to different voices and be surprised, but it starts by setting the expectation that there’s more dimensions to anything that we originally believe. I want to start creating space, even saying like, people are messy. We don’t want to make them simple, but we want to make sure we understand them. Then it’s our job to translate that to the business, but we need people just to be themselves and we need to, again, like create that space.
[00:40:13] JU: What’s one goal you set for a team? I mean, is there a metric, I wonder? Is it number of hours with consumers? I wonder like, how can you – I don’t know. You may have an answer. You may be thinking about it. But how do you know if you’re on the right track in a quantitative way?
[00:40:30] KGZ: In a quantitative way, eventually comes down to, are we making a measurable impact into how we are communicating this brand or what we’re selling? Is that rooted to audiences that we can then like track to see like what they’re actually doing? It will come down to that point eventually. When you look at the whole continuum of insights, like we do get to that point. But a path before we get there, as we need to make sure that we’re measuring the right thing, from audiences that will be most impactful for where this brand wants to go. We think about like our strategic vision. So for me, even right now, in month two of this new organization, a metric of success, I’d say over the next 90 days is, are we even starting to talk about consumers in a richer way. And in a way that starts allowing us to understand as we think about learning, how are we going to be differentiated from what learning is today, how different competitors are kind of playing in the space in a way that feels grounded in like real people.
To me, that’s how – it’s like slow steps to get there. But I’d say those are some of the components that we start thinking about. I’d say like, the intricacies of how we talk about a concept. You start scratching – you can scratch to the next level. The more connected you are to consumers. For me, when I look at brands, I can tell to some degree like how much time they’re spending with real people, how important empathy is, by how nuanced their communications are about what space they’re in. For me, the nuance of the communication, and then eventually you see that in the stuff that company sells, but how you talk about a brand should be deeply rooted in a person. That’s how I start seeing if we’re getting traction.
[00:42:11] JU: I got you.
[00:42:12] MH: Yeah. I want to sneak this in. I’m so fascinated by insights. If you could give me one resource that is insights 101 or insights for dummies, what would that be?
[00:42:23] KGZ: Oh my goodness. There’s a lot that exists.
[00:42:25] MH: Your favorite, curated from you.
[00:42:28] KGZ: Curated for me. I spent a lot of time probably at the first piece of it looking at culture and being like, so I digest like Futures Laboratories, is one organization, I guess, I spent a lot of time with that and WGSN. I love, love, love the global context for just understanding like people trends. Those are like on my – every week, those are two places like I definitely spend some time and that gives me a lot of thought for what I want to ask about, or who I want to talk to or where to look. So those are like two of my go-tos.
[00:43:02] MH: Got it. Gems for our listeners. Appreciate you.
[00:43:08] JU: Kelly, I know, I want to be respectful of your time. We could have many more hours of conversation. But thank you for sharing. It’s really, really amazing to hear about your journey, and hear about your values and how they manifest themselves in the organizations that are fortunate enough to get to have you at the helm. So we’re grateful for your time, grateful for your influence and example and we’re excited to share your story with people. If folks want to look you up or find you, what’s the best place or way to do that?
[00:43:36] KGZ: Oh! The best place to find me would probably be under LinkedIn. I show up as Kelly Garrett Ziegler. On Instagram, I believe I’m Lady_KGZ1. Two great places to find me.
[00:43:50] JU: You got it. Love it. Thanks, Kelly.
[00:43:52] KGZ: Thank you.
[00:43:53] MH: So inspiring. Thank you so much.
[00:43:54] KGZ: So fun. Talk to you all later.
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