SKIM

Happy Monday 🧡 I’m lucky enough to be in one of my happy places- Delta Air Lines SkyClub enjoying some downtime preflight ✈️ I’m also excited to be heading to Wire Exec Summit to reconnect, recharge and spend quality time with the women in research and insights 🌅

At yesterday's MRxPros Tuesday Talk, Marilyn Heywood Paige presented "The Solopreneur Shift: Reframing Work and Reclaiming Your Power." We learned about the challenges solopreneur insights professionals face in running their businesses. A key challenge many face is how to spend precious time and resources and when to bring in a partner to help. At Gazelle Global , we help many solopreneurs with just that - taking on sampling, recruitment, fieldwork management, programming, hosting, tabulating, coding, and translating. As a boutique operations hub, we can manage tasks that add less value for solopreneurs, allowing them to focus on research design, analysis, reporting, and consulting, the true added value their clients want from them (see here: https://lnkd.in/ezzitgfz and here: https://lnkd.in/eCHmz7XA ). If we can help you, get in touch.

I am thrilled to share that I have returned to Whirlpool Corporation to lead Consumer Insights for our North American Brand organization. In this role, I serve as the "Voice of the Consumer" across our iconic portfolio of brands. My focus is on bridging the gap between deep human understanding and commercial strategy, ensuring that every strategic brand priority is anchored in actionable consumer truth. Leveraging my consultative background, I partner with our teams to move from data to action. My goal remains to champion the consumer and drive success through evidence-based strategy. It’s great to be back in the "Pool" and working alongside the talented teams that make Whirlpool the world’s leading kitchen and laundry company. #WhirlpoolCorp #ConsumerInsights #BrandStrategy #MarketResearch #LifeAtWhirlpool

Today in MRxPros one of the discussion points was about how we stay up to date with the industry. This paired with having a bit of Quirk's FOMO (even though I went to the Dallas one last month) got me thinking.... Conferences can be a great resource not just because of the sessions, networking opportunities or the energy. But because conferences reflect a snapshot of where and how our industry evolving. More and more, talented people are working independently or building something new — stepping outside traditional structures to bring flexible expertise to the work. Both client-side and agency teams seem to be increasingly leaning into this. This shift is meaningful. And industry events have an opportunity to reflect it. Because the reality is: * Teams don't just need more people: they need the right expertise at the right moment * Speed matters, but so does trust in who you bring in * Access to new ideas, tech, and approaches matters just as much for those working outside the traditional roles * And staying up to date benefits not just individuals, but the clients and teams we support It'd be great to see more events create paths to attend for this group — whether it's pricing built for the way more people are working now, or programming that speaks to them directly. Maybe even a speed dating approach for clients and agencies to meet independents whose expertise would support their needs?? Feels like a real win-win: broader perspectives in the sessions and a more connected insights community overall. 🧡 PS - I must confess that I was lucky enough to have an agency invite me to Quirks Dallas but it would be great for more people to have opportunities like this!

Something we see a lot with clients. A tendency to stick with what’s already there when making decisions, even when everything around them has changed - shoppers, channels, pricing, all of it. And it’s not because there’s no data. It’s just hard to undo decisions once they’re in place. Over time, those decisions stop being questioned and they just become “how things are done.” The teams that get ahead are the ones who actually challenge that idea - what’s this pack really doing, does it still earn its place, what are we keeping just because it’s always been there? Not easy conversations, but they matter. We’ve been talking about this more through PPA and how to move from legacy decisions to more intentional ones. Read the full story here: https://forwrd.it/r/759g SKIM #RevenueManagement #PortfolioStrategy #PPA #AssortmentStrategy