The #MRXHero interviews are being published daily this week in reverse alphabetical order. To find out more about the #MRXHeroes week, and why we’ve put it together, check out our other post here.
To many of you, this may be an ‘obvious’ one. We often hear about Ray Poynter but how often do we celebrate Ray, and the people like him that exist in our industry? Not often enough I say! (Picture me now, rising from my seat in defiance).
Ray Poynter, Director of Vision Critical University, Founder of NewMR and company director of The Future Place as well as author and frequent conference speaker, is the 2nd interview being published in the Market Research Heroes week this week. But what’s made us choose Ray Poynter as an #MRXHero?
When I arrived, young and weary, into the Market Research industry, Ray Poynters name, and voice was one of the first things I heard. I was working in a small agency in North London and decided to use Facebook to look at ‘researchy’ things (this is before I discovered Twitter and Linked In). I then moved on to other companies and at Nebu, my good colleague at the time Andrew Jeavons spoke to me about Ray. “He’s one of the good guys” he said, but luckily most people in MR are :).
Fast forward a little while, and Ray has developed a revolutionary platform filled with great content, for free, called NewMR. I can’t describe to you how excited I was, and still am, about NewMR. I think it’s bloody brilliant. And I was lucky enough to be asked by Ray to doodle out a few logos for it and one of my doodles, which I hated, turns out Ray rather liked. I don’t know if it was the awful NewMR logo-doodle that kept us in touch now, or a series of other good things, but I am very happy that we kept in touch. Like Tom Ewing in yesterday’s interview, Ray does a huge amount of work in different areas. The list at the beginning of this article is small, although to most of us with 1 job, all those activities seem quite enough. Ray keeps trim and fit raising money for charity and playing rugby as a hobby and he’s also an avid blogger, and his blog is heralded as one of the Top 10 MR related blogs everyone should read. Ray, like Tom Ewing, also asks the tricky questions. His presentations are refreshingly different and I’ve always liked Ray’s open approach, one of the very things that make his talks refreshing. So without further ado, I introduce Ray Poynter. Another person who my Facebook, Linked In and Twitter feed would be very quiet and a bit dim without, and a person who has taught me more research vocabulary than I could have learned working in even the biggest MR agency. So here is David Wiszniowski with Ray Poynter.
– Betty
D: Ray Poynter is one of the researchers chosen to be featured on RTG’s ‘Heroes of MR’. Ray currently plays a variety of roles in the market research industry, but is most well known for thought-leadership and the work he does as the Director of Vision Critical University, as well as his work on #NewMR . We at RTG chose Ray to be a ‘Hero of Market Research’ because of his constant desire to unearth new reasearch methods, and incorporate up and coming technologies into the industry.
I’d once again like to thank Ray for allowing me to interview him.
D: How did you get into the market research industry?
R: Initially as a programmer, writing statistical software, in 1978.
D: When did you first realize you had a passion for research?
R: Over the 1st two years of writing software my interest shifted from the code to the meaning.
D: If you can recall a defining moment where you felt that the research industry was calling you, when was it?
R: It was gradual.
D: Can you explain to me what the ‘Director for Vision Critical University’ does on a day to day basis?
R: Tries to share the learning, with colleagues, clients and competitors.
D: What sort of impact do you think the work you do as a speaker, director, workshop leader and the founder of NewMR has on the industry itself?
R: Hopefully it will have shared some of the learning and encourage people to achieve more of their potential.
D: Do you think the market research industry is changing? Evolving/devolving?
R: It is evolving, and it has been for almost all of its 70+ years of existence.
D: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the market research industry right now?
R: A large part of what MR currently delivers is not fit for purpose, when clients realise that there may be a backlash, and the backlash could be against the good as well as the bad.
D: Do you have any suggestions on how to oppose this challenge?
R: By leading the change, rather than following it.
D: Can you describe Vision Critical in three words?
R: Provides Insight Communities.
D: Can you describe NewMr in three words?
R: Shares new thinking.
D: Your LinkedIn profile states that you have over 30 years of experience dealing with success and failure in the industry. What has been your greatest success? Your worst failure?
R: Kipling says we should treat these two impostors the same way.
D: If you could revisit these ‘failures’, would you change anything?
R: Yes, but the principal of endogeneity suggests that I knew what I knew now, the problem would have changed too.
D: Working at Research Through Gaming, I know there are many challenges/opportunities with smaller research companies. Are there any differences you have noticed between working for an encompassing research company, and also a smaller yet still globally recognized company? What are the top three differences between larger firms and smaller companies?
R: Smaller companies only need a few people to love them, large companies need everybody to like them well enough to do business with them; small companies are agile, large companies have more mass, so changing direction is harder; larger companies have more resources, so they tend to be able to handle the ups and downs of creating a solution.
D: How were you able to attract clients in what can be seen as a somewhat skeptical industry with a slow rate of change?
R: MR does not have a slow rate of change. Within the industry there are fast, slow and medium paced changers – if you are at the front of the wave you need to focus on the fast changers – recognizing that you can’t make a long-term business out of companies that change quickly.
D: Do you do any client facing in your current role? If so, what advice would you give to building client relationships?
R: I do some client facing work, perhaps 25% of what I do. Listen to what clients say, work out what they need, be honest with them, and stick up for what you believe in.
D: Do you consider yourself a ‘hero of market research’? Why?
R: No, I’ve just done what I wanted to do and I have not risked life and limb to do it. I have friends who are soldiers, nurses, prison officer, police officers, carer etc – they are heroes, I am well paid for doing stuff I like, mostly with nice people.
D: Why do you think we have chosen you to be a hero of market research?
R: I make a lot of noise.
D: I know you are very busy and have a variety of blogs, websites, etc. I was wondering how your interests in non-research related fields can be seen as influences throughout your work?
R: I tend to treat my life as a single entity, every aspect influences every other. For example, the rugby I play brings me into contact with people I would never meet in the middle-class, all graduate world of MR.
D: You have written countless industry publications and maintain a wealth of knowledge on MR. What are the top three trends you see happening throughout the industry?
R: 1) the trend away from the large scale collection of stated beliefs, observations, and behaviour; 2) the continued trend towards technology (which started with Herman Hollerith in 1890); 3) the trend to working with customers, as opposed to studying them.
D: Do you think these trends are detriments to the industry, or signs of good things to come?
R: The trends are like the seasons, not good or bad, but phenomena to work with and adapt to.
D: It’s apparent that with your blogs, columns, work, awards, papers, presentations and family life that you are very busy. Could you provide a rough ‘day in the life’ for me? What does a typical day for you look like?
R: I am lucky enough to say there is not a typical day – not even a typical location. However, it is fair to say they I am online and on social media almost every day of the year.
D: What advice would you give readers as to how to juggle their time?
R: Generally, don’t try to multi-task, listen to the radio rather than watch the TV, do tasks at the earliest opportunity rather than at the last possible moment, do start things you can’t finish, and remember that 80% right is better than 100% late.
D: You’ve attended many a conference, what are some of the things that put you to sleep during these talks, if anything? Alternatively, can you provide any examples of what excites you at these conferences?
R: Monotone, single speed, quiet presenters are the most soporific. Surprises are good, enthusiasm is good, and the details of the methods used.
D: Being that I am a student, and also an intern, are there any words of wisdom that you would give to those just starting out in MR?
R: Avoid jobs and roles where you do the same thing over and over again – such as large trackers, in the early years you need variety and you need the chance to meet research users.
D: Personally, even though I’ve taken a program specifically geared towards market research, I still don’t know all of the main players in the industry. With conferences, linked in profiles, more conferences, papers, webinars, talks, presentations, blogs, green books, vines and hashtags I find that there is a lot to take in. In fact, I still feel as if I’m playing catch-up. What sort of advice can you offer as to how to make sense of it all for someone who is new to the industry? Being that I’m still a novice? How important is it for me to keep tabs on the innovations being made in MR?
R: I think that the easiest way of getting into the flow would be follow the #MRX tag via Twitter, click on the links, attend some of the webinars, and then talk about what you hear/see with your colleagues.
D: As a final question, I wanted to know how you feel the work you have done for MR has made the industry a better place for research, respondents and clients. How is our industry better now, with you in it, than it was before?
R: Most of my efforts have been in the area of sharing knowledge, developing new approaches, and speaking up for new researchers and participants. I will leave it to others to determine if I have achieved anything useful.
D: Thank you Ray
We’d like to thank Ray massively for his time in this #MRXHero interview. More interviews throughout this week are a-coming!