our fabulous keynotes:

David Thomas, Chief Analytics Officer, Bank of New Zealand

David’s role as Chief Analytics Officer leads a centre of excellence at BNZ including Research, Lean Analytics, Data Science, Performance insight and Analytics Transformation. David will talk about BNZ’s lean analytics model that combines agile methods, human centred design, cross functional teams and analytics to develop customer interventions that see the team move from hypothesis to prototype handover in three weeks.

Margaret Reid, Customer Experience Manager, ANZ

Margaret’s presentation on ‘Bringing the customer alive in a large organisation’ will discuss how organisations can bring the customer into every day and strategic initiatives. “Customer” is often on a blueprint or a mission statement, but how do you get the business not just talk the talk, but walk the talk?

Glen Wright, Insights Manager, Auckland Transport

Glen’s role at Auckland Transport means he gets to stand at the intersection where customer stories meet company stories, and has access to more great methods and data about customers than ever before. Glen will talk about how it is critical to maintain a core understanding of customers in order to not lose sight of the people we work for and with.

Luke McKeown, Customer Experience Manager, Consumer, IAG

Matt Meffan, Director, Vision Critical

Amidst the proliferation of data and all of the change that we’re experiencing, machines aren’t reducing the role of humanity, they’re amplifying it. How do we design insight programs where our big and small data streams enrich each other, simulate human relationships, and enhance the customer experience?

Duncan Stuart, Explorer, Kudos Organisational Dynamics

Always a crowd favourite, RANZ Fellow and Life Member Duncan Stuart’s talk ‘Conversations with your Toaster? Time for a Digital Detox!’ is a call for researchers to look at the social impact of the hyper-digital world, and a call for the promoters of this technology to include imagineers and experts in human psychology in the process of rolling out the next wave of smart digital wonders.

Horst Feldhaeuser, Group Client Director, Infotools Ltd

Automation, machine learning and AI are the new buzz words in Market Research. Horst’s presentation will explore what the differences are, where they’ve been already implemented and what the new frontiers may be.

Dr Will Koning, Chief Data Officer & Ana-Maria Mocanu, Data Scientist, Kantar

Will leads the Data Science team within Kantar NZ and will present examples of data integration and data science, and the impact these have had in helping our clients drive growth, reduce costs and improve service provision. Their talk will provide real-life examples including using big and small data to drive growth, unlocking the value of open data, using machine learning to drive decision making and overcoming the subjectivity of qualitative research with text analytics.

Mark Buntzen, Founder & Director, The Distillery

Mark is passionate about helping people create better products, services & experiences. His talk ‘Insights to Action’ will explore recent research, thinking and experiences around how we can effectively help clients translate research into compelling insights that galvanise action across their organisations, and build a culture of innovation.

Michael Wells, Graduate Consultant, TRA; Catherine Frethey-Bentham, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, the University of Auckland & Emily Bing, Account Director, Pureprofile

Following Michael’s postgraduate study in marketing at the UoA where his research focused on the market research industry, their presentation ‘Money talks, but will I?’ explores the human element of research in the digital age, and how understanding the differences in respondents on online panels can help researchers, clients and panel suppliers establish credibility and improve overall data quality.

Victoria Fedotova, Client Director, Kantar TNS New Zealand

Victoria’s presentation ‘From now to the future: research trends in the digital age’ explains why research is losing relevance with respondents and our survey metrics are losing relevance with clients. However, as the the industry is rebounding, if we embrace the change we will see better research outcomes for the clients, respondents and the industry. Victoria will cover off the primary drivers of this change and the key benefits that make research relevant in a digital world.

Nicola Legge & Jonathan Dodd, Research Directors, Ipsos

Amid the talk of big data and other developments that can both challenge and supercharge market research, it’s worth remembering the human element that is always necessary. Nicola and Jonathan’s presentation ‘Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep? What Is and What Isn’t Changing in the NZ Market Research Industry’ turns the mirror on ourselves to see what can be learnt from both the data and the people.

Derek Brown, Country Manager ANZ, Survey Sampling International

Every day a client wants to axe 10%, 30% even 50% of their sample – because the participants failed their attention check. How can they trust any participants after that? But as researchers, we are seeking the truth. Derek’s presentation ‘Careful with that Axe, Eugene’ explores trust levels and experience dealing with participants one-on-one and how we can judge what data quality attention checks ought to look like, not what we wish them to look like.

Maxime Lapeyre & Damian Willems, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise

The market research team at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has embraced the use of location analysis to provide insights better, faster and in a more digestible way.

Location analysis enables you to provide actionable insights by leveraging the power of mapping to illustrate patterns, trends, and relationships that would have remain hidden in tabular or report form.

Whether it’s finding the right street corner, neighbourhood, city or region, location analytics are key to unlocking new markets, and the good thing about it is you don’t have to be a data scientist to do it!

Bart Langton, Research Director - Head of Quantitative, Ipsos

This research uses Big Data and AI (machine learning-based) to identify behavioural patterns and patterns of behaviour vs its antecedents. The information and patterns unearthed by AI are examined in light of learning from behavioural science to evaluate their validity and what they tell us about how to change behaviour and achieve strategic objectives (e.g. customer experience, customer adoption of particular behaviours or products or services).