Editor’s Note: The following interview features a GreenBook Future List honoree, Hannah Kirk. The GreenBook Future List recognizes leadership, professional growth, personal integrity, passion, and excellence in the next generation of consumer insights and marketing professionals within the first 10 years of their careers.

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Introducing Hannah Kirk

Hannah is a true innovator, already transforming the way in which our industry captures insight. Her success is driven by her passion for putting people at the heart of everything she does; whether that’s having the respondent experience front and center in the innovation she develops or capturing the essence of what a client needs, her ability to translate business needs into real-world relevance is second to none. The power of her approach is seen in Clickscape and AlertYa, innovations that she has seen from concept to profit generation in two years. She is currently a Senior Innovation Executive at Blue Yonder Research.

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What’s a fun fact about yourself that would surprise people to know?

I’m from England (and a proud lifelong Manchester United fan!), but I managed to combine my love of travelling and sport. I studied in North Carolina, USA, for my Bachelor’s degree on a football (or should I say, soccer!) scholarship. I absolutely loved my time there and learnt so much about myself as a young 18-year-old moving to the other side of the world! I spent as much time as I could travelling, and ended up ticking off over 30 states, including two cross country road trips between North Carolina and Washington State!

 

Since starting your career in market research, what would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

The creation of AlertYa, an app I designed to transform the experience of respondents participating in research, is definitely the thing I’m most proud of. It was an idea that came to me from a client conversation for a specific project, where participation in multiple time-sensitive tasks was important, but difficult for real people living their lives! I came up with a business proposal and was awarded the funding from the business to make it happen. Six months and a lot of development work later, we had an app! We have since spent a lot of time optimising the app and have a lot of plans lined up to make it even bigger and better this coming year.

The app is designed to not only make research easier for consumers, which I am particularly passionate about, but it also allows us to get closer to moments in consumers’ lives and product journeys, as well as saves internal resources due to using an automated system. It’s a simple concept, but it really works; it’s all about breaking tasks down for consumers into smaller, more relatable snippets. It means we can target the right moments with automated notification reminders, making things like claims research much easier for all involved – and more accurate. We’ve had great feedback from our users, who really appreciate the reminders and having all their tasks in one place, which to me is the greatest reward, so I’m really proud to have helped make this front and centre of our respondent experience at Blue Yonder with AlertYa.

 

If you could go back in time to when you first started your career, what advice would you give to your younger self?

The biggest piece of advice I would tell myself is don’t be afraid to say “No”. I am definitely someone who loves to get my hands dirty and learn about anything and everything, but at times that became a detriment to my performance at the start of my career, as I would be overexerting myself and trying to do too many things at once.

Saying no can be really hard, especially as a young researcher who wants to impress and progress, but it’s really important to be able to have the confidence to say “No” (politely of course!) when you just don’t have the capacity to take something on. Saying “No” still doesn’t come naturally to me, but I have learned to take a step back and self-reflect on where I should be spending my time when challenges come my way, and better manage my time so I’m not burning out.

 

What do you consider to be key characteristics or qualities of a leader? How does this play into market research?

You must be yourself. I am still fairly new to management but consider myself a leader in other aspects of my role, and you have got to remain true to yourself while leading. Authenticity is key. That also comes from not claiming to know the answer to everything, and not being afraid to ask for help and advice, even as a leader.

Empathy is also a huge one. We’re all humans with different emotions and personalities, and it’s important to be able to step into another’s shoes and understand how they may be thinking or feeling to best communicate with them and be the leader that they need.

I think accountability is also key. I always say it’s “we” when leading my team and discussing any challenges we have faced. It’s never about a blame culture – we are all responsible – and as a leader, I will always be accountable for my team, and do my very best to help them develop as leaders themselves.

I think all of these qualities relate to market research really well – we don’t claim to have the answer to everything, but we can try to get as close to the truth as possible through various research methods and technologies. As an agency, we are leading the way and ensuring our clients get the answers they need, but it’s all about teamwork and making sure that we stay authentic, excellent leaders.

 

If you could change one thing about the insights industry, what would it be?

I would love to see more emphasis on testing/observing natural consumer behaviour out in the real world, since that’s where we live our actual lives! So more tools to test this whilst people are in their natural environments that don’t influence behaviour would be great to see. Of course, it’s a tricky challenge, but one that’s so important to master. I think we begin to do this by really putting the consumer at the heart of the research process and developing methodologies with real people in the real world in mind.

 

What is something you’ve built or launched that you’re proud of?

My academic background is in neuroscience, and I’m proud of the work I have done in building the Blue Yonder approach to Neuroscientific testing. From training staff, sourcing partners, and fostering relationships, to presenting to clients and helping them build their own approaches and use cases for Neuroscience, it’s really rewarding to step back and see the progress we have made.

I’m particularly proud of this because I struggled to blend my academic learnings into the insight world at first, but after gaining experience and exposure to more clients and more projects, I’ve learnt how to take the best of both worlds to help find answers and get us closer to the truth. It’s been a great journey so far, and I’m really excited to continue developing our tool kit and trying different methodologies on suitable tests.