In this episode, we interview David Bauer from Hemispheres, a full-service customer insights agency. David shares the journey of Hemispheres, their approach to research, and how it informs brand and business strategies. He discusses the variety of projects they've worked on, including collaborations with major brands like Microsoft and John Deere. We also dive into the importance of qualitative research, trends in the industry, and the impact of AI on research methodologies. David offers valuable insights into the challenges and processes involved in branding and rebranding, highlighting the significance of combining rational and emotional components for effective brand names. Lastly, he shares advice for young professionals in the research field and emphasizes the importance of contributing to discussions and solving problems collectively.

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00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:54 About Hemispheres: Origins and Services

01:31 Career Journey and Early Experiences

03:10 Notable Projects and International Work

05:01 Qualitative Research and Methodologies

07:30 Trends in Research and AI Integration

09:13 Challenges in Virtual Focus Groups

11:44 Brand Naming Strategies

18:56 Understanding Customer Personas

23:21 Misinterpretation of Research Results

27:19 Final Thoughts and Advice

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Transcript:

Our transcripts are AI generated, please excuse any typos or transcription errors

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Laura: hello and welcome David Bauer from Hemispheres David. We're so happy to have you here today.

David: Laura, thank you so much for having me join. I'm looking forward to it. I haven't done much podcasting yet, and I'm looking forward to it.

Laura: Absolutely. Well you've got that Yeti microphone, so you are ready. So David, first of all, hemispheres. Tell us a little bit about it and then how you [00:01:00] started. 'cause what I know about Hemispheres is you guys are all things research across the board, but I, I deal with it with marketing and, and media.

David: Absolutely. Yeah. So Hemispheres has been around for 22 years now, which is crazy. Can't believe it's been going by so fast. We're a full service customer insights agency doing all kinds of research and strategy projects. We use a lot of different research tools, working with clients across different types of organizations and delivering them the insights that they need to make important business decisions.

Laura: Well, that's what made you get into that.

David: So I have a degree in marketing and creative writing. I originally thought I was going to become a copywriter working in advertising and marketing, and I found a brand strategy agency called Tattoo that did brand consulting and brand strategy in San Francisco and worked for them with them when I was relatively young.

Found out that they did research to inform the brand strategy. At that point, when I was 24, I had no idea [00:02:00] what marketing research was or that people even did that. And so we helped to inform some huge brands and during that time, I. As a relatively young person, I was sitting in meetings with CMOs of Fortune 500 companies and learning so much, and I loved talking to people and getting their life story and their insights.

And then that really helped shape some of the brand strategy that we worked on. And the cool thing about research was that even at a relatively young age. I was able to share things that people told me. With these leaders of Fortune 500 companies, they wouldn't have listened to me when I was 24, but I was sharing things that their customers had said, which was really cool.

And I just really enjoyed the opportunity. It's been an amazing career. I. My business partner, Lynn Reed, has a similar background. She got into business strategy and go to market strategy and used research to inform that. So we've really created hemispheres with the idea that yes, we're doing research, but it's really there to inform brand strategy and business strategy, and [00:03:00] that's what gets us excited.

Laura: Oh, that's cool. That's cool. So, can you

David: I.

Laura: about any of the cool brands you used to work with, or, it's okay if you can't.

David: No, no, absolutely. I mean, over the years we've done work with Microsoft, John Deere a lot of different food companies like Frito-Lay. Clarisonic, which was founded by David Giuliani, who created the first the Sonicare toothbrush and then the the Clarisonic facial brush. They started their company around the same time we did in 2003, and we worked with them for 10 years as they grew and grew and grew, and then eventually sold to L'Oreal.

And unfortunately David passed away a few years ago, but an amazing mentor and an amazing inventor, and he really created his company's. By listening to his team, listen to his customers. And I think that was a big part of their success. So, that's, that's one of the exciting projects we've worked on.

One of my favorite things that I've done is get to travel internationally on projects. And so we work with local [00:04:00] translators. I've been to farm country in Brazil and Bogota, Columbia, and across Europe and to Hong Kong and Sydney, and such an opportunity to meet different people. One of our favorite stories, we were working on a project for Microsoft in Milan, Italy, and we were talking to people who made technology decision, software decisions for their organizations.

And so we're there interviewing people. Incomes a none dressed in her full, none habit. She's over 50 or so. And we're all like, oh, she must, she must be in the wrong place, but we have to be obviously really gentle and sweet with her. And turns out that she makes all the business decisions and software decisions for her convent and knew everything about technology.

So it's just a reminder never to make assumptions and listen to people's stories.

Laura: that's awesome. Thank you. .

Lisa: Obviously there is a huge variety of research projects and types of [00:05:00] research that can be done. Do you have a personal favorite to work on?

David: Of, of methodology or.

Laura: Yeah, with brand strategy,

David: absolutely. I tend to lean more into the qualitative side. I'm part of an association, which is a long name, but qualitative Research Consultants Association, and it's a group of people passionate about qualitative, which really means talking to people on one-on-one or in small group settings, whether it's in person or online or in small communities.

But I really love hearing people's stories and them talking about. Whatever it is that interests them or what's relevant to the, to, to the way that they're using the client's product or service? I feel like there's, you know, hemispheres is about left brain and right brain thinking, and a lot of the ways we make decisions are not rational.

They're more emotional, they're based on different influences that we have. And so when you really get a chance to hear someone's story and kind of explore what's important to them, that's really when you [00:06:00] get at some of those deeper emotions, which I think really. Influence how people make brand decisions.

And then within that, my favorite methodology is to go into people's homes because you learn so much about them. And what they're, you know, you see things in their home that you can ask questions about, and it, it really is powerful. One quick example. We were doing a project for a food company and they wanted to understand the big box shopping experience.

And so we go shopping with someone, he comes back with this big box of some kind of frozen food. He opens it up 'cause it won't fit all in his freezer. He is gotta put some in his kitchen freezer, some in his in his garage freezer. And he gets outta Sharpie and he starts writing down something on each of the packages.

I said, what are you doing? He said, well, I have to write down. How long I put it in the oven or microwave 'cause there's no label on it. And so just, someone wouldn't have told us that if we'd asked, what do you do when you take out your, your packaging? But because we observed it, he barely noticed he did it.

It was a great insight that they needed to [00:07:00] individually label every, every package.

Laura: Wow. That is cool. That is the fun stuff. Getting to see like the individual in their daily lives and I heard about a, a friend, one of the, one of the research women that. she came and spoke at MCI, but she talked about that with having to sit and watch a woman put on makeup. She worked for L'Oreal

David: Yeah.

Laura: and she had to watch how she put on makeup and learn.

You know, it was just fascinating that, that's how we learn now. Is there trends, are there trends out there right now in research? Meaning like, are you doing a lot of focus groups? Are you doing a, is there, you know, is it, is there a lot of virtual interviews? Like what is the primary way of with brand strategy that you're methodology that you're using?

Aside from just like overall qualitative preference.

David: absolutely. Well, we're still doing, we, we do a lot of online surveys and that's not going away. People are taking a lot of those surveys and we're doing a lot of analysis [00:08:00] based on that. A lot of traditional kind of focus group in, in-depth interview work has moved online. So we're doing a lot of those over platforms like this.

So, and it's actually really cool 'cause a lot of people who wouldn't want to or were able to take the time. To go to a research facility are participating. We did an interview on beer and one of, one of the, the customers of this brand. She did the interview from her truck and it turns out that she has a, a baby that's just really attached to her.

So if she was had done this from her house, the baby would've kind of gotten in the way. So her husband was with the baby in the house. She went into her truck and we did this whole interview and it was fantastic and we were really able to, to hear her story. So that's a trend. People are, you know, using their phones to share.

Video or images of their home even while we're remote. So that's really cool. There's online communities where people all get into a certain research platform and [00:09:00] share that. I think the, the latest thing really is ai. And so there's a lot of tools being developed to augment research with ai, and that's something that we're paying a lot of attention to and figuring out how we can use it or how we can help our clients use it.

Laura: Do you find that when you're doing virtual focus groups, because I, I've been in enough focus groups to know that there, you know, you have a moderator, right? Which is probably you or whomever and or Lynn, and have to like. Control the narrative a little bit. 'cause there could be that one person that talks a lot and then everybody kind of goes in that direction.

How do you mediate when you have that like lag time? And there's just like a lack of spontaneity sometimes.

David: That is absolutely a challenge. More so online when you're in a focus group room, you can kind of use body language and see everybody. It's a lot easier to get them connected because of that. We try to have smaller groups online and, and really, and a lot of times we prefer one-on-one. But if we're doing a group setting online, we want a smaller number of [00:10:00] folks.

And we wanna try to keep them engaged with some different exercises. Some of the research, online research platforms have some tools, some things they can do. You could have them draw on a whiteboard. One of the things we did learn that was in a an advantage of online, over in person was something as simple as the chat feature.

So while you're having the conversation, people in the chat feature, can you know, I agree with that. Or I have another thought on that. Whereas in a focus group room, they'd have to write their own notes. The moderator wouldn't see them. So there's some tools for online that, that make it more powerful.

Then of course, the clients can observe in a virtual backroom and share notes, and they can be anywhere in the world, which is, which is really powerful.

Laura: I like that. The more I think about it too, the better, because even one-on-one, you know, if you're gonna do a focus group, let's say you do a focus group of 20 over, I mean, still that one-on-one is, that's how that person is experiencing life anyway. So it's like better to not have all that influence.

David: Exactly. [00:11:00] Exactly. And then even seeing people's backgrounds, like, I'm seeing your backgrounds and you're seeing my background is a little clue into everybody's life. And so you can get that and get a, a snippet of their home life, you know, in the, in the research.

Lisa: Are there any advantages to larger groups, or is it just a time saver basically?

David: Lisa, you asking about for online? The advantage is that you do have more people you do have more perspective. And when it's goes well, they're responding to each other and they're building on each other's ideas. And it's a little bit more of a brainstorming session. But that can be harder to do online.

But there's techniques that we can use to try to get them to interact with each other and, and share their experiences.

Laura: Okay, so let's really quick talk about naming and, you know, obviously our audience is marketing directors and, and leaders, You know, everyone talks about going through a rebrand and, and it's a really big deal if you're doing a, a [00:12:00] name change and it's like the biggest deal.

Right? So, briefly, obviously this is so complex but, you know, what are the steps that someone would ha what are the things that people have to think about that they're not thinking about that need to consider when they're going through a name

David: Yeah, absolutely. So I think this goes back to the idea of hemispheres and left brain and right brain thinking, rational, emotional. My personal view, and I'm sure other people share it as well, is that the best brand names. Have both an irrational and emotional component. They're not completely wacky. They have some connection to the category, but they're also evocative and creative and emotional.

Otherwise, they become kind of forgetful forgettable or generic. And so to use some, some local examples the name Starbucks, which. On the forefront doesn't suggest coffee. It does. You know, there's a connection to the book, Moby Dick and Traveling. And so this idea of coffee shipped around the world and it has [00:13:00] a little bit of mystery to it which is where they pulled in the mermaid.

And so there's, there's some kind of interest to it that does tie you think about. People on ships maybe drink a lot of coffee, and so there's this kind of mystique to it. Another brand I've worked with with them, I also worked with another brand that they eventually acquired Seattle's Best Coffee, which is a very straightforward name.

It does have Seattle in it, which people associate with coffee. But it, it's somewhat generic and, and it's probably not a surprise that Seattle's Best Coffee no longer exists and Starbucks does. But I think if you had asked people in the seventies, which of these is a better name for a coffee company, they go, obviously Seattle's Best coffee, right.

Because, so, so really in naming research or whether it's you're actually talking to your potential audiences or you're just a team thinking about what's named, do we wanna rebrand our company or our product or our service? If you go too generic, it's really forgettable. So you [00:14:00] wanna really think about what are the brand attributes.

Product attributes you want this name to convey, and how well does that name hint at that? And so, so a research process that we and others follow is to really evaluate how well does the name suggest things that you want your brand to represent or stand for, and use that information to inform your decision rather than which one do you like the best?

Laura: Oh, I love that. I love the idea of would seem like something you have, like your methodology and the way that you go about it and the way you think about it, which comes from years of experience. But then now you have AI that will also help you, like go out there and. It just pulls from weird places that maybe, you know, it would take forever to pull from, to give you some like feedback and ideas of like, I mean, I would just think that would be helpful. Like, you know, oh, this is the Greek word for blah, blah. So that would be, you know, I don't know.

David: That's, that's absolutely right. When [00:15:00] we're generating name ideas or brainstorming with clients to generate name ideas, we start with the themes. What are the themes or the brand attributes that we want our organization or our product to have? And now let's concentrate on those themes and not think about would this be a good name?

But let's just put that aside for now and just say, if we wanna be healthy or educational or fun. What are all kinds of fun things and let's get imagery and use that to inspire and let's write down 60 words related to that attribute and then use that and then we can kind of synthesize those and pull together names that are based in some brand truth, but are interesting and creative on their own.

Lisa: It's funny you brought up the Seattle's best coffee example, because to me that sounds like an SEO nightmare, which is sort of similar. I ran into this recently. I was helping a friend try to look up a roofing company in their town, and it was their town's name best Roofing. And turns out that brings up like 10 [00:16:00] different companies and none of them were the one that had that name. So it

David: That's a great point, Lisa. 'cause you know, in the early days of, of doing naming, we didn't have to worry about is the website there or SEO and now we do, there's actually a big debate about whether you need to own, you know, you brand name.com or if you can add modifiers to it. And some people say, well, doesn't.

Do I need to be.com or can I be dot something else? And I think where I'm hearing more often from people is that having the.com still is the best. It shows that you're a legitimate company or.org if you're in, in that situation, but that you don't need to worry too much about it because you can really just pull in some aspect of your name.

And once people start going to your site, they're not going to care whether it's exactly that name or not. So for example, hemispheres wasn't available when we started 20 years ago, but Hemisphere's Insights was so where Hemispheres [00:17:00] insights.com, it could lead to a little bit of confusion maybe, but it still has the essence of our name.

And once people bookmark you or they just are gonna click on a link anyway, it's, it's less important.

Laura: That's true.

Lisa: too to social media platforms if that's part of a marketing strategy. I, I feel like if you find a name where it's free everywhere, you kind of have to, the stars have aligned for you.

David: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Laura: Well, definitely for me, for Double Z media, I just, it fell, it fell into, you know, not everybody has two Z's in their last name, genius. Right. Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for a company to keep in mind before they begin working with a company that'll sort of help them get the most out of the

Mm.

David: Yeah. Thank you so much. We we spend a lot of time with our clients or prospective clients. Asking questions from the very beginning to make sure some people are really clear, they know exactly what they wanna do and what they wanna [00:18:00] solve for, and some people don't. But really it goes down to what is the problem that you're trying to solve for?

What is your marketing challenge? What's your business challenge? What's your organizational challenge? And what are all the questions that you have? And then if you had the answers to those questions, what would you do with that? We really work back from what is the reason they need some more information or insights and what are they trying to solve for?

Are they developing a new name? Are they evolving their brand? Are they changing their pricing strategy? Do they wanna figure out if they want to go into new channels? To offer their products. Do they wanna change their marketing messaging? And so we really wanna understand that. And then based on that and other things like their time and their budget, we work on a, a plan that will work to provide the information and insights they need within their, within their parameters for their, their business challenge or organizational challenge.

Laura: Okay. I have a question. So we [00:19:00] oftentimes, as media buyers. Have kind of go with audience personas, okay. That are given to us sometimes from the client or the creative firm, or sometimes we find them. how, I guess what I'm saying is sometimes clients will be to like, we want you to tell us who our customer is.

We want you to tell us, you know, all these things that we're like, well. Okay, we're gonna have to do some research and figure out who your customer is. You could tell us, but no, just, so, and, you know, potential, but really it's a customer, like, right. How would you, I guess, how could you help somebody who was wondering, like, who are, who are our customers? someone like me who is like, this is a brand new, you know, and I'm not sure

David: Yeah. Sometimes I'll start with just. Getting them if they, if they're not sure, getting them to just brainstorm and start to talk about [00:20:00] some of the audience elements or some of the segments that they think that they might have. You know, we're not saying this is it for sure, but let's just start to talk about it.

And that really helps us to think about how do they think about their customers? Just letting them kind of talk through it. Are they, are they thinking about them from demographics? Are they thinking about them from how often they, purchase certain products. In the case of the roofing client, maybe it's about do they own their house or not?

They probably do. And what kind of house is it? So just hearing the parameters helps. And then once we kind of get those parameters out there I ask them questions about, well, well, how much information do they have about this? And are there sources of that information? Often if they have current customer data, that's a great place you can tap into that.

But if it's prospective target audiences we really need to then potentially do some research. Another way to do it is to look at their competitors and go to the competitors' sites or see what the competitors are [00:21:00] saying. And there might be some clues there in how the competitors are talking with their audiences to understand how they might be looking at some different customer pro profile types.

Laura: Oh, that's cool. It's the only way that we are able to do it really, is to start testing messages on different audiences and seeing which resonates, is, it's okay if it, but it, you know, to get any kind of a real sample size, you gotta spend some money. And so it's. Yeah, it's kind of a lot of testing

David: Yeah.

Laura: , There's just different ways to go about it, but that sounds a lot more reasonable to find like audience personas.

Like to go and tell the client. this is Mary. She's 52 and she likes wine and cats.

David: Yeah,

I will say there are some brand new organizations out there that are working in AI to take data that already exists and create AI based segments, and then you're able to ask the AI segments questions. About anything you could ask that potentially anything, you know, [00:22:00] what is your house like? Do you have any pets?

What do you do on the weekend? Now the potential is, is huge. Where they're actually getting their data from is a unknown in some cases. Now, if you're a, a huge organization, that already has a ton of research and a ton of information on your clients or your customers. You. That may be effective and, and, and probably accurate information.

If you're an independent that's pulling it from random places, that would be a question I'd really ask them is, where is that data coming from and can I trust it? But it's an exciting potential. And at this point, without knowing too much about it, I'd say that it could be an idea for a way to brainstorm some things, but I wouldn't necessarily wanna base a big business decision on it yet.

Laura: On the ai.

David: Yeah.

Laura: Yeah, I know. We've, I've had to like ask seven times and where'd you get this from? Sources. So, and then like deeper and deeper and [00:23:00] deeper. Can you get me more than two then? Can you get me, you

David: Right,

Laura: it's, it's really prompt, prompt, prompt until to get to brass tacks of like, who is, you know. just some other agency given their opinion. No, I, you know, I'm just curious,

David: right, right.

Laura: industry standards and that sort of

David: Yeah. Yeah.

Laura: anyway.

Lisa: Have you ever experienced someone misinterpreting or misapplying research results?

David: Never, never happens.

Lisa: Not your research results, of course,

David: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No,

Lisa: insights and reporting.

David: I mean, we all have our own biases, right? I was just working on a, a. Packaging redesign project where there's three different directions and the client asked me which one I like the most. And I said, you know, I really, I can't help but have ideas from all the work that I've done, but I really hesitate to say it until we do the research because I don't know if I'm your target audience or not and what they're gonna say.

And so I [00:24:00] really don't like to do that. But I think that often people. Some people use research to just back up what they already believe, and so I just really encourage clients to kind of step back and, and, and check their current beliefs, which are still valid. You know, they've been working in their careers for maybe many years, but to be open to what their customers are saying and, and be sure to listen to it with an open mind.

Laura: Oh, yes. I have sat in focus groups with clients and watched their faces like, oh. Yikes. I didn't know but, I don't think there's a downside ever to, to focus groups because worst case scenario, yeah, it backs up what you already know,

David: Yeah.

Laura: least you know, so.

David: I, I did have a situation once, and this does happen sometimes that a stakeholder who's not involved in the research process is only there for the final presentation. And it doesn't happen often, but sometimes they say something like, I. [00:25:00] I, I knew all this already. You know, why do we do this project?

You know, you're not telling me anything new that I didn't know. And my response to that is, well, you've been working in this business for 40 years. The chance that a gen general consumer is gonna tell you something that you didn't know is probably pretty slim. They're not experts. You're an expert. You, all you do is think about this and, and your your family's wellbeing is probably based on you doing well and making money.

But I said, what? What this has done has told you the top three things that are important to these consumers, and these are the three things you're supposed to be focusing on. So you might have had a hundred ideas in your brain, and of course these three of those were already in your brain, but now you know the top three priorities to go after.

That's a new learning and, and that actually has changed. So my, they're okay. Now. I understand, right? They that I, I was thinking about all this stuff, but they helped me understand what are the three priorities that we should be focused on for this initiative. I.

Laura: Very [00:26:00] nice. If there's anything else actually that you wanna cover, I. David, I think we've covered a lot of

David: Yeah, this has been fan. You have such good questions. I, you guys are two researchers as well too, it seems like.

Laura: yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, I wanted to like, I, same as you as far as copywriting, that's what I got my degree in is advertising with a copywriting, you know, concept advertising. And you know, I got an immediate vine, but I even a, a research firm, another research firm, what a long time ago was like, I. Would you moderate focus groups, you'd be really good. And and I was like, that would be so cool research because it's so fun. Like it's, yes, you can argue with it if it's, if it is, you know, left brain, right brain in some cases.

But there is so much, it's just so much like what we do where I go into a client and say. You can't argue with the metrics. You can't argue with this, this, this is not me speaking here. This isn't, this is the metric. How many people came to your website? How many [00:27:00] people watched, how many people converted? And so it's, it really that's, it is the same. Very similar in that way. It's just there's not subjective, like creative coming in, going, you know, three different ideas and everybody has a different opinion.

David: Yes.

Laura: So very cool.

Lisa: Well, David, thank you so much for joining us today. We do have one final question for you. If you could go back in time to yourself at the beginning of your career, what is one piece of advice you would give?

David: Excellent. Before I answer it, Lisa, you asked that so perfectly. Earlier in my career we used to say something like, what is the best or the most? And we've learned since that if you just say, what is one thing, they're probably gonna say the thing that's most important. And it's a lot easier to answer a question like that than when you ask the most.

So that's perfect. That's a great tip for your kids too, if you have them if you're, if you're driving home from school, you say, what's the best thing that happened at school [00:28:00] today? They'll be like, oh, nothing. But if you just say, well, what's one cool thing that happened at school today? Everyone can come up with that, and it probably was the best thing.

Okay, so now I have to think about your question and answer. It's

Laura: communications

David: yeah, yeah.

Lisa: From the creative writing to analytics position

Laura: That's true.

Lisa: I don't know what it, I don't know what it is

David: oh, we're, we're all left brain and right brain people, which I think is, is really cool. One thing, I think that when I first started it was intimidating working, you know, hearing about all these big companies and these big decisions that they needed to make and, and to make a contribution. When I was just starting out in these, these debriefs and ideation sessions with these top level folks, and I was 24, I challenged myself that in every meeting I was gonna say three things.

Might not be super smart, I might just be saying, well, what she said was really good because blah, blah, blah, [00:29:00] and building on someone else's idea. And, and the thing I learned from that is that, you know, everybody has something to contribute and everybody has a different perspective and people want to hear your perspective and, and.

I also want to hear other people's perspectives, and so that it doesn't, you don't need to be intimidated or concerned to contribute. We're all groups of people trying to solve challenging problems and if you're a kind of a good participant in that process and open-minded and, and eager to listen to other folks together we can solve those problems.

 [00:30:00]

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