Personal relationships key to getting work, says Under Armour insights executive

Speaking during the panel at the recent IIEX conference in Amsterdam, Marion Hoek-Koudenburg, director of consumer insights capabilities at Under Armour, said that heading into a new fiscal year, her biggest concern was being “asked to cut a third of my budget”.

“Looking at new vendors, technologies and partners isn’t the highest priority on my agenda” as a result of those cuts, she added, and there was a need to make use of existing resources for research.

“I am looking for people who are there to partner with me and help me navigate the tough circumstances we are in, and try to help make sure people see how important consumer insight is, so next year I won’t have to make such a big cut,” explained Hoek-Koudenburg.

“It is more about making already existing information come to life and tell stories.”

She said that personal relationships were a bigger factor when it came to which agencies she would use than technology or tools used by the business.

“Trust gets built because you have a fit with a person,” added Hoek-Koudenburg. “If I see an agency that is very detailed, very technical, that’s amazing, but I don’t necessarily think they’re the partner that will help me sell my story about consumer insights.

“Fit is very important. Then there’s accountability – if you say you will do something and you don’t do it, that’s terrible. If I put a deadline for a proposal and you say you will make that deadline and you’re a day late, that’s not working. I’d much rather have honesty.

“Openness, accountability and fit. If you help me look good, I will help you look good as well and I will definitely refer you to others.”

She also said she did not like getting emails from agencies out of the blue pitching work, adding that they should not “assume everyone wants to hear what you have to say”.

Also speaking on the panel, Helen Devine, user experience research manager at The Economist Group, said her company has great in-house analytics, and was more interested in agencies that could offer full-service quant, a research repository and business-to-business participant recruitment.

She also agreed that she wanted agencies to show a real interest in The Economist Group’s work when pitching for projects.

“It is about that human-to-human connection,” Devine said. “Get in touch with me and have a real conversation with me.

“I’m happy to be approached by email as long as you have something really interesting – tell me about something in my industry, or something you heard on one of our podcasts. It has to feel quite genuine – I want you to genuinely want to work with us and feel you can bring something.”

Devine said she was also happy for research to not have a specific return on investment (ROI) if it was a good project in and of itself.

“Any piece of research we do, we are buying into it, are emotionally invested in it and spending a lot of resource on it,” she explained.

“I want to feel quite confident at the beginning that it will be quite successful. I am not so sure about research having to have a definite ROI. Sometimes you can do something because it is for your learning, or better understanding our users.”

Devine also said she wanted more diversity from agencies across a range of areas. “A lot of the time, we hear about people talking about Gen Z and Zoomers, and we have a lot of students and young people, but a lot of our audience is older,” she said.

“Think about the diversity in the user base we are interested in and pitch it appropriately.”

Efrain Rosario, head of global futures and shopper planning at Diageo, told the panel that he preferred to hear about new agency partners from trusted sources, such as conferences or recommendations from others in the industry.

He also said that he wanted agencies to provide use cases when bidding for work, as it would help him to sell the project internally.

“That paves the way in terms of having those internal discussions, and building buy-in early in the process rather than having to work at it as you are already in the project,” he added.

Also on the panel, Diana Mitkov, senior manager demand insight and analytics at De Beers, said that ”analytics is the biggest challenge” for the company, and she was looking for people who could extract as much information from big data sets as possible, as well as qualitative research.  

She added that she routinely deleted emails pitching work from agencies if they did not seek to provide a solution to a business problem, adding that “there has to be something to catch my attention”.