Alex Gabbutt – Research Hero
Alex Gabbutt, head of community research, The Diversity Standards Collective (DSC)
Alex is a qual researcher and moderator, currently at The DSC, a full-service cultural insights agency specialising in supporting big brands and creative agencies to conduct targeted community research and testing.
Prior to this, he spent two years leading the insight function at LGBT Great, an LGBTQIA+ DE&I transformation startup. He has also worked in the market insights team at Canon’s EMEA headquarters, as a management consultant, and in corporate intelligence.
Alex was nominated because he "consistently goes above and beyond to ensure we honour the individuals and communities we collaborate with and portray the intricacies of their lived experiences in a way that is accessible, impactful, and significant."
1. What is the biggest challenge you have faced during your career?
The recurring challenge for me has been navigating the allure of specialisation while remaining a generalist. I’ve flip-flopped from brand to agency, from multinational to startup, each demanding a different mindset and, often, methodological approach. The difficulty, particularly early in your career, is resisting institutional pressure to adopt a single, narrow mode of thinking.
Now, as head of community research, it’s my job not to see competing methodologies, ideas or modes of thinking as a tension, but as an opportunity. That mindset shift, though, has taken a lot of time and self-reflection.
2. What will be the next big trend or development in the research industry, and why?
Industry discourse is (quite rightly) focused on the rise of synthetic responses, the ‘threat’ of generative AI, the emergence of useful AI co-pilots, ever better automation and the demand for big-data analysis.
However, my hope is also for a parallel commitment to deeper, more targeted ethnographic work. I genuinely believe the future of market research lies in combining large-scale quant robustness with the more nuanced, community-informed storytelling that emerges from thoughtful, hyper-personal qual engagements. I expect to see far more user-generated content, video diaries and creativity in qual and I hope that clients will take the time to understand the value these approaches bring.
3. Who inspires you as a researcher?
My goodness, what a question! Catch me at different times and I will have 10 different answers to this. If I may be allowed two, the first is certainly my wonderful team.
The second is my wonderful husband, Calum, who is currently a Chapman-Schmidt Fellow at Imperial. His research leverages sophisticated computational methods to better understand how cancers evolve. Irrespective of how elegant the solutions are or how much data he can crunch, his focus is always on improving patient outcomes. I have really tried to mirror that in the way I approach research. To my mind, all good research should seek to improve the lives of the real people and communities it engages, as well as helping brands to become better.
Sure, there is a hard commercial reality underpinning much of this; but is it not far more edifying to place at the core of our methodological and conceptual philosophy a genuine commitment to better outcomes for the people that matter?
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