The big read: Are we at a turning point for the insights industry?
Do you remember disruption?
While Harvard academic Clayton Christensen popularised the term ‘disruptive innovation’ in 1995, it was not until later that it became shorthand for rapid transformation. In the early part of the last decade, the word previously associated with noisy schoolchildren elbowed its way into the business lexicon.
We started to see think pieces penned by self-appointed changemakers (or doomsayers) foreseeing the disruption or even death of everything from books to marketing. Whole industries were to be disrupted by a heady mix of irrefutable changes in consumer behaviour along with startup technology, bolstered by venture capital, that would render traditional models obsolete. There is nothing more exciting than the idea of disruption (or, in marketing, the ‘shiny object syndrome’).
Yet despite all the talk of change, the fundamentals generally remained the same. In the evolving insight industry, change has been constant, but relatively incremental. Until, that is, the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022 and the two letters on everyone’s lips since.
Even those possessing a healthy dose of scepticism are likely to have had their heads turned by generative artificial intelligence. The last two years have seen a massive wave of adoption across sectors. In insights, the shift has been no different, with client-side functions and agencies alike implementing AI technology within their insights offering and upskilling their staff. After a gold rush period of technological integration, we can now see more clearly how it is impacting the research sector.
Without factoring in AI, change is still afoot a few years on from the pandemic. Looking at business conditions in general, client organisations may have been experiencing more ‘business-as-usual’ trading conditions of late, but challenges remain. The most recent Research Live industry report, which tracks the UK research industry, described 2023 – the financial year the tables are based on – as ‘a year which further illustrated the resilience of the industry’, with continued challenging market conditions for parts of the sector, and political turbulence and volatile operating costs characterising the market.
£9bn
The value of the UK research, insights and analytics industry (MRS industry sizing)
7.2%
Growth year-on-year for top 100 individual agencies (MRS League Tables, Research Live Industry Report 2025 )
Following a major year for elections globally, and a newly inaugurated Trump back in the White House, wider macroeconomic impacts remain uncertain. Though it has been building for some time, misinformation is on the rise. At a sector-specific level, data quality remains a prominent issue that risks undermining the entire business of research.
So, with the sector at the forefront of decision-making and knowledge sharing, is the insights industry at a turning point? For many, it’s a resounding ‘yes’. For others, they see the current moment as an evolution – a continuation of existing trends, rather than a definitive fork in the road.
From supplier to partner?
Talk of getting ‘a seat at the table’ has been around for so long that some now see it as an industry buzzword in its own right, but the ambition of the sector to take greater prominence in organisations’ decision-making hasn’t disappeared. In fact, the emergence of generative AI has prompted many on the supply-side of the industry to consider the potential resulting shift in strategic position, should such technological tools be able to carry more of the onerous parts of the research process.
Amy Cashman, until recently executive managing director of the insights division at Kantar and now global managing director, brand, customer experience (CX) and marketing, considers the industry to be at a turning point – although “maybe not in the way that people are expressing it”.
Raising the issue of AI, Cashman says: “I think there’s a lot of talk about, sort of, AI putting the industry in jeopardy, putting it at risk, and focusing on the speed, the efficiency, the reduction of people from the labour press, things like that, but I don't think that’s the right way to look at it.”
Instead, Cashman feels AI allows researchers to approach their jobs in an “entirely different manner moving forward” and hopes it will enable the industry to have more impact.
She has been heavily involved in the rollout of Microsoft Copilot at Kantar over the last year and says it is “genuinely not” about speed and efficiency.
“We see people reporting they're more creative; that they feel they're producing better quality, better impact work. So, I think it’s a turning point in that sense of hopefully actually stepping into that vision we've always had for research as an industry – having that greater impact with clients,” says Cashman. “What AI’s doing is freeing us from some of the day-to-day things that have got in the way of that in the past and really elevating the creativity and impact that we can have as an industry.”
Communicating value
A 2023 study on insights business maturity, conducted by Cambiar and published last year by the Global Research Business Network in partnership with MRS and the Insights Association, found that consumer insights (CI) functions have higher business impact and are more strategically integrated into corporate decision-making, compared with the previous insights maturity study eight years prior.
Kahren Kersten, founder of Experience Insights and specialist consultant at Cambiar, thinks the industry is at a turning point. “There’s this need to go beyond methodological expertise, which is kind of the comfort zone of a lot of insights professionals,” she says. “We're also very siloed, so we like to stay in our area that we know well, and we feel comfortable in – but we're at a point now where we really have to build these other critical skills, that will enable us to demonstrate our value.”
The key finding to emerge from the business maturity study, says Kersten, was that consumer insights functions that are doing a better job of measuring the ROI of insight – and crucially, communicating that – are more likely to have a higher degree of business impact. “It’s really all around demonstrating our value,” says Kersten.
The industry must upskill in more “human skills” such as storytelling and collaboration, says Kersten, who also conducts research on research for the Insights Career Network (ICN).
“Because there’s so much rapid change and the expectation placed on us as insights professionals is growing, we really must adapt to that. We must accept – and there’s a lot of resistance. We're seeing people don't want to change. They don't know why they have to change, but ultimately, we have to accept that the industry and the expectations are shifting. So, we must adapt. It’s about a mindset shift – that’s most critical. It’s about having a growth and a learning mindset and then focusing on becoming responsive – understanding what’s going on in the market and what’s externally driving those changes.”
Indeed, a new paper developed by the MRS Senior Client Council on client-side talent recruitment and retention, written by Nick Rich, advises that insights leaders must promote and embed a culture of continuous learning and professional development to stay competitive.
According to the paper: “By doing so, insights professionals can stay ahead of market trends, anticipate disruptive forces, and harness the power of emerging methodologies to address the ever-evolving needs of their businesses.”
James Endersby, chief executive at Opinium and chair of MRS, firmly believes that the role of insights people is becoming more and more important but also points to uncertainty in the sector. Does he think it is at a turning point? “Definitely, with a big exclamation mark,” he says, adding: “Do we realise we're at a turning point? I'm not sure we all do just yet. I think we all know deep down, but I think a lot of people are struggling to come to terms and to understand what we need to do, and I wouldn't say many really know what we need to really be doing. But yes, insights is at a turning point and it’s because of research technology and AI.”
What exactly does the sector need to be doing? For Endersby, it’s all about people. He expresses the view, shared by others, that the sector should be focusing on boosting its relevant skillsets and on how it can use AI and research technology to the best of its potential.
“Change is inevitable, but we need to ensure we take our people along with us. A lot of what our people have been doing and how they have been doing it will change significantly, and that doesn't need to be scary,” he says.
“One thing clear to me is that the insights professional, both on the client and agency side, is becoming even more essential. Our role as negotiators, investigators, interpreters, storytellers, communicators, and navigators of the truth will always remain but we do need to adapt to the evolving landscape, influenced by AI advancements. We need to develop ourselves across a number of areas.”
Communication is key, as the GRBN study showed, to achieving greater insights maturity – and it’s one of six key areas Endersby points to for further development (see boxout, below).
The researcher of tomorrow?
To adapt to the evolving landscape, insights professionals should develop themselves across the following key areas, according to James Endersby, chair of MRS.
1. Communication skills. “When we're sitting on the ability to do what AI can empower us to do, we still need to be able to communicate, whether that’s communicating into the systems or taking the data insights and everything else we've learned,” says Endersby.
2. AI and machine learning understanding – broad familiarity with AI tools and machine learning applications within agencies and client-side insights teams, as well as critical thinking and the ability to critically evaluate data.
3. Adaptability – openness to new learning techniques and methods as the field evolves.
4. Consumer behaviour insights – the ability to understand the psychological factors influencing consumer decisions.
5. Project management skills – managing time and resources efficiently, including managing multiple projects or data sources.
6. Data analysis skills – proficiency in interpreting large sets of data and understanding statistics to derive insights.
In the face of a continually murky economic forecast, and with culture-war issues abounding in public debate, some sectors and business leaders are stepping back from diversity, inclusion and equity commitments. While there is no evidence for a dialling back of DEI efforts within market research specifically, the sector has some way to go to be fully inclusive, both regarding its research outputs and its people.
Endersby says: “If we want to take full advantage of AI – and people are essential to this – we need to ensure that our people represent the consumers we're trying to understand. We can't lose sight of the fact that we need to continue to push on diversity, equity and inclusion and transformation in our sector. We can't lose sight of that, and I do worry that perhaps the enthusiasm might not be as strong as it once was.”
Endersby expresses concerns that in troublesome economic times, businesses can put other objectives on hold. He cites a study Opinium used to produce on the hopes and fears of UK consumers. For years, the biggest fear was around health and wellbeing, but when the financial crisis hit, health and wellbeing suddenly dropped to second place in terms of priority. The top of the list? ‘My financial outcomes’. “Businesses are at risk of doing that,” he says, “so we need to be careful about that.”
Historical context
The industry has always been evolving, and you could say AI is just another step along the road. It’s certainly far from the first disruption the market has seen in its history.
Writing in the January 2016 issue of Impact magazine about ‘the qual revolution', former MRS chair and fellow, the late John Downham, described the impact of the arrival of motivation research in the UK in the mid-1950s as “striking”.
The emergence of motivational research, explained Downham in the article, prompted debates on issues including how ‘representative’ is best defined, how much weight could be attached to findings from small samples, and the effects of interviewer/respondent interactions.
Downham wrote: “Arguments about these and related questions risked creating a virtual polarisation of the market research profession – ‘qual’ v ‘quant’. It took some years for any general agreement to be reached about the appropriate relationship between the various research approaches. This upheaval, which started in the 1950s, can reasonably be described as a revolution – but it was one that led to a better understanding of the nature of differing methods and techniques, and to a more broadly based profession.”
Similarly, the advent of online research triggered significant industry debate.
YouGov UK chief executive Will Ullstein thinks the sector is at a turning point – but believes that has always been the case. “It’s one of the reasons I love the industry. It’s always looking at technology, listening to the market and adapting and reshaping. If you think about the technology aspect, that’s always been reshaping the way we operate, interact with clients and the work that we do.”
Ullstein adds that “YouGov existed out of technology change”, pointing to the company’s adoption of online polling and its application of multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) in polling for the 2017 UK general election.
However, he notes: “AI is changing our industry, it’s changing our clients’ industries – find me someone that hasn’t been impacted by AI. But as it’s driving speed, efficiency, access to data, new types of data, democratisation of data, I think we also have question marks. We’ve got to prove the models. They’ve got to prove their accuracy –that answers from AI are as good as answers from real people.”
With more awareness emerging of the pitfalls of AI, more attention is turning to the provenance of data, highlighting the wider issue of data quality in general. Speaking in Research Live’s three-part podcast series on data quality, released towards the end of 2024, Debrah Harding, managing director at MRS said: “If left unchecked, this could become an existential issue”.
Ullstein says: “We’ve got a world that’s awash with low-quality data and misinformation, and the research that matters is the research people know they can trust to deliver insight and the views of real people. Not all research is created equal.
“It used to be a hygiene factor. Now, increasingly in pitches, people are asking questions about data quality. And ‘what you are doing to combat fraud?’ And ‘how can we be sure of your data quality?’ It is an urgent issue, and it is one that the industry is very much addressing.”
Post-methodology?
If there is a shift to emerge from the proliferation of AI, it is not unreasonable to suggest that it could herald days of greater impact for insights professionals. In this scenario, researchers would harness new technologies with ease, and we could see a greater progression of the ‘beyond methodology’ shift – elevating the role of the researcher and switching up a gear beyond discussions of productivity and efficiency.
If the industry can be strong on AI and lead from the front, that could put insights into a better position in organisations. That’s the hope of Fiona Blades, chief experience officer at Mesh Experience, who sees AI as a “revolution, not an evolution” in terms of the opportunity it offers. “I'm a real believer that you need to hear the customer voice. I think sometimes within our industry, we tend to be kind of backroom, and we tend to be working away with the numbers, but that doesn't mean to say that voice gets heard and actioned. And I think that’s something that I would really like to see happen.”
To do this, adds Blades, the industry will need “real, passionate leaders, people that can communicate, that can tell stories that are compelling to a business”. If they can, that will “put them centre stage,” she adds.
Kelly Beaver, chief executive, Ipsos UK and Ireland, also points to the importance of good leaders. With “increasingly varied” disciplines in the industry comes the need to change how professional development is approached, she says.
“The number of disciplines within Ipsos in the UK is increasingly varied, from people who used to make policy, to econometricians, data scientists and project managers. It is more varied than what it was five or ten years ago,” says Beaver. “And that means you need to develop professional development tracks for people from all different types of disciplines and be able to lead not just researchers but a wide multidisciplinary team.”
“Brilliant research skills, data skills, generative AI skills – all of those technical skills are really important, but leadership skills and how you lead people is also a critical discipline and it’s something that needs enhanced in the industry. Often, people can reach a level of seniority by being a really good technician – a really good researcher or a really good data scientist. Increasingly, we need to make sure that they’re really good people leaders as well as having the technical discipline they’ve built up over their career. I think in the industry there are a lot of very senior technical people and leadership skills are often undervalued and are increasingly important in leading multidisciplinary teams.”
Evolving complexity
Key in any researcher’s toolkit is the ability to understand whether shifts are temporary or permanent. Some bring the perspective that the sector is not at a turning point but rather on a constantly evolving scale.
Cultural strategist Matt Klein, head of foresight at Reddit, isn’t convinced the sector is at a turning point. “It’s easy to think that change is existential or is going to disrupt one’s own daily life,” he says. “However, as insights people, we should know that change is a constant, and just because change exists doesn't necessarily mean that it is a turning point. Maybe there is a bit of a winding path in a road, but I don't know how much of that is a 180 or 90-degree angle or turning point.”
Beaver feels that, rather than a key juncture, we’re witnessing an evolution of existing trends, but acknowledges that this has accelerated in recent years. “I think it’s less of a critical turning point per se but more of a speeding up of some of the impact from the trends we’re already seeing. The reason it has sped up has been a mix of huge volumes of data out there in the world, plus improvements in tech and AI mean that our industry is evolving faster than it perhaps would have done otherwise.
“As an industry, we’ve been talking about insights from the research that we collect for our clients and becoming even better at providing insight and even stretching into being able to provide advice off that insight. And again, that evolution has also sped up potentially as the tech and AI capabilities have advanced and perhaps made it easier for us to do some of the production elements of the research work.”
For Beaver, the key force shaping the sector is how people live their lives. She says: “If you think about what we do, our job is to help big brands, government and advertising organisations to really understand the consumers and citizens they're interacting with every day and how they are living their lives and what they do day to day – and what they as actors can achieve by understanding that. How people live their lives has really changed – how they consume media, how they vote – so how people change their values or how they are living their lives, and what stays the same … understanding that is really shaping how we produce insights.”
She points to passive measurement as an “increasingly important” to fully measure people’s behaviour, adding: “People are spending a huge amount of their time online. How people live their lives impacts how the industry evolves and the methodological decisions we take around capturing how they think, feel and behave and how that’s changing.”
None of the agency-side insights leaders we spoke to express any sense that clients have significantly changed how they commission research in the last few years, but a few trends did emerge. Hybrid working has continued, with most pitches and debriefs not necessarily taking place in-person as they would have been. And there has been a trend towards slowness in terms of getting projects signed off and over the line.
Integration of data sets has also continued. Says Beaver: “We also see an increased appetite to properly knit together lots of different data sources – that’s something we see a lot from clients. They want us to work with their data systems, their operational data, as well as our own, but again that was an emerging trend that has kept emerging and has come more to the fore.”
As with any service industry, change is often led by what’s happening at client organisations; meeting their needs and responding to their challenges. Tamsin Robertson, customer director for clothing and home at Marks and Spencer, sees understanding consumer sentiment in the face of continued economic instability as the biggest challenge for the year ahead, and doesn’t consider the insights sector to be at any great turning point.
“There are challenges all the time. I don't feel like we're on the cusp of everything changing,” she says. “Particularly, if you relate it to AI, I don't think it’s going to be a sudden thing. As we're seeing, it’s entering the industry as people try and work out how to use it, and that will grow and develop over time but it’s not a case of everything suddenly being different.
“The biggest challenge in my head is how we really understand the attitudes and behaviours. We’ve seen consumer confidence being so low, but people are still spending billions of pounds on clothes which no-one really needs. You think: How do we marry this up?’ We've been saying for a long time: ‘This is going to be the January to April period where no-one’s going to spend anything, and it’s going to be really tough,’ – and it hasn't happened the last few years, and I think that’s going to be really interesting this year. How do we find that out?”
A broader issue about the insights function being as relevant as possible is key, according to Robertson. “One of my mantras through Covid, which has carried on, is about being present and relevant – I think that’s still really important for an insights function; in a time potentially of turmoil and economic instability, how do we be relevant and communicate, that ‘OK, you might have seen the latest GfK Confidence Index data is saying this, or the Bank of England interest rates are that, but what does it actually mean for our business?'
“People’s attitudes to buying the products that we sell and therefore understanding what we should do differently or think about, is the tough bit. It’s always tough when we're asked to look in our crystal balls as insights functions, but I think that’s going to be particularly tough, even in the short term.”
When it comes to ensuring the function is ‘present and relevant’, communication is on Robertson’s mind. She also thinks face-to-face customer time is going to become even more important for directors, to help them understand the decisions that some customers are having to make.
“I've been here over five years and I feel that my biggest challenge is about how to communicate, in an engaging way, what might be quite complex things,” she says. “What The Times writes about might not be exactly relevant to us, so [leaders] might hear things and say: ‘Oh, we need to do that.’ It’s like, ‘Well no, you have to put it all together.’ It might be quite complicated, and how best to communicate in an engaging way is what’s on my mind.”
“We have lots of ways of getting a sense of the pulse of the nation. I'm not worried about getting insight, but it’s more how to communicate it in a way that all levels can really understand it, because it’s going to be complicated. I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge for most in-house teams.”
Owning the integrity conversation
Access to a proliferation of data sources has become an increasingly important part of the insights professional’s role – something Klein thinks highlights an urgent issue for the sector.
“We continue to gain access to truly invaluable data, and in ways that we haven’t had access to before. I think we know that the world runs on data, and as insights people, we are grouping up as much of that as we can to try to make sense of it.”
Klein points to two arguments from this, firstly: “I don't know how much of that data we actually need to find insight, as much as we just want to say we have it.” Secondly, he highlights the crucial role of thorough analysis. “In light of all that access to data, the more we collect it, the more of a responsibility we have to analyse it rigorously.
“We think a data point is unwavering support for whatever the claim is, and the truth of the matter is: data lies. Data can tell any story you want it to tell. And as we've gained this unprecedented access to data, we think including the stat or the percentage point is the trump card – saying ‘data said it’ – forgetting that the ways in which that data is captured, who it represents, the ways it’s analysed, the way it’s phrased, the way it’s visualised, tells stories on its own. I don't know if we're slow enough and cautious enough and mindful enough with that observation.”
How should the sector move forward in this context? “My fear is data is used in a way that does not necessarily represent cold hard objective truth and is being used as entertainment, it’s being used as sales. It’s being used as narrative construction. The reason why it concerns me is because I think if you look at kind of the trickle-down effects of that, data eventually loses its power, its truth, its weight. And if we lose that, I don't know what else we have.”
Klein argues that because we now have access to invaluable quantification of culture, there is a need to slow down. His caution would be that practitioners ask themselves if they are aware of the use cases in which they are employing data. “Can we take on the responsibility of presenting that data as close to truth and as close to reality as possible? And if we must sell, or entertain, or tell stories, are there other ways of doing so without co-opting the integrity of quantifying culture?”
“I think we're overwhelmed by it and we're not slowing down and applying some sense of rigour and ethics to how we're how we're employing it.”
With the proliferation of information out there, could this present an opportunity for the research industry to shape the conversation around integrity? Klein thinks so and sees this being about morals and ethics rather than skills. “As insights people, we are afraid of contradictions. If data point says A and data point says B and those two things contradict one another, we're going to throw one of those out to make sure we tell a consistent, standardised, believable story. But we often forget that where there is contradiction, when things don’t add up, is where there’s true insight.
“I think what’s happening is because there is so much data, and because there’s so much opportunity, we get to cherry pick, we get to pick and choose what stories we want to tell. And we have optimised for convenience, and we have optimised for straight and narrow. So, I think that the opportunity is to reclaim inconsistencies, reclaim things that don't add up. By doing so, you can honour the integrity of the data and honour what the true insight is without having to mould it into whatever you want it to be.”
Collaboration
The sector has seen greater amounts of collaboration in recent years, often with smaller businesses and freelancers taking the lead on this. Kersten sees this trend growing and continuing with the need to become more agile.
“There are a lot of smaller businesses that are partnering with other organisations, other smaller businesses. There is increased competition, but if we partner where we have different skill sets, we can bring together, then we can better meet the needs of those client organisations.”
It’s also about taking a “holistic approach”, according to Kersten, with smaller companies leading the way in collaboration, connecting the dots for large corporate client organisations that have historically been quite siloed.
“Some of the smaller businesses we're seeing that are doing really well. They're becoming a connective tissue for those client organisations that are not necessarily communicating and using their resources in the best possible way, using all that data that they must create a holistic view. Smaller organisations are partnering with those companies and sometimes also partnering with other external small businesses to help them bring together those insights. It’s a more strategic approach.”
With AI coming into play, it’s imperative that the sector can prove its worth beyond what technology can achieve, says Kersten. “We're having to really demonstrate what it is that we can offer beyond AI, because AI can do a lot, but if we focus on those soft skills. Those are things that AI can't take away from us.”
“A lot of agencies and even client organisations may have a certain methodology that they would like to use, but the more that we can be responsive and agile, pulling in insights and data from other places so that we can shape a more tailored approach, and then shift when we learn just enough that we know that we can then take a different direction. I think that’s also going to be something that we're seeing happening more and more.”
While practitioners are divided on whether the sector is at a turning point per se, what’s clear is that as clients’ needs become often more complex in an uncertain environment, the sector will continue to evolve, and consumer understanding will become more important for decision-making. To remain competitive, insights functions and businesses must continue to foster their strengths and unique differentiators, with people at the centre.

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