Top 5 Highlights from Quirk’s Brooklyn

Quirk’s Brooklyn was a couple of weeks ago and we were there to soak up all the knowledge being shared! Here are our 5 highlights from the conference:

1.Heavy Qualitative Presence

This year, it seemed as if there were many more qualitative research providers than in previous years or at other conferences. There were many who were talking about Qual/Quant hybrid research and different ways you can add on Qual to Quantitative research.

2. Not your Normal Dashboards

Something else that was pretty prevalent this year was the wide variety of companies offering dashboards. And these were not your typical dashboards either. These were more complex dashboards with the ability to offer custom analytics depending on the clients’ needs. They definitely weren’t the dashboards we in the sample industry are accustomed to.

3. Getting to Gen Z

There were also several sessions around how to message and engage younger audiences. This included what brands needed to focus on to resonate with this target audience and how to market to them. We’ve seen this topic gain a lot of traction over the last couple of years as Gen Z and Millennials enter adulthood and become an influential part of the population.

4. AI, Blockchain, Machine Learning, Oh My!

The big three topics of market research were all represented in Brooklyn this year. IBM presented on Blockchain, but rather than try to sell the group on it, they gave realistic examples of how the technology is currently being used, and how it can be implemented in the future. AMS gave real-life examples of how machine learning is having an impact on our day-to-day data collection.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) was also discussed heavily in several sessions. A change at Quirk’s versus past conferences was that there were more case studies presented, rather than just talking about AI as a hypothetical.

5. Brands Push Data Quality

In what was our favorite session of the conference, Proctor & Gamble presented with CASE (Coalition for Advancing Sampling Excellence) on the importance of data quality, and how important it is to keep best practices in place. It was refreshing to hear an “end client” take this stance on data quality. We normally hear about faster and cheaper, but the focus has never really just been on “better.” This will no doubt make waves in the industry.

If you are interested in a full debrief of Quirk’s Brooklyn, click the link below to request a free consultation.