“Perfection shouldn’t be the enemy of progress.”
At least, that’s the mantra this week’s guest lives by. Marat Fleytlikh, Associate Director, Consumer Insights at The Kraft Heinz Company, is an industry legend. He is a seasoned consultant who delivers insights through visualization and storytelling and is obsessed with the consumer.
Meagan sat down with Marat to discuss how Kraft Heinz is “walking the talk,” the art and science behind insights, and being an enabler versus a barrier.
Tune in to learn:
Why it’s ok to try something different that doesn’t pay off
How you need to nurture some ideas before they become successful
That, in insights, agile and democratization are more than buzzwords
The importance of sharing knowledge between different generations of insights professionals
We had a blast chatting with Marat. And stick around to the very end for a great book recommendation from Marat.
A Few Highlights From the Episode:
Meagan: I think Agile and democratization are two big buzzwords, but for good reason. And it sounds like you guys have a lot on your plate and in terms of the kind of transforming what you're already doing really well and making it available to other people around your organization. Are people kind of chomping at the bit to have more access to the stuff?
Marat: One-hundred percent. It's in pilot phase at the moment but should be rolled out within the next six-plus months. But yeah, like there's a lot of historical content that's applicable, right? Like if I start with a solid base and you know what some of these questions had been asked before, what do we need to then ask to continue moving forward? So it's always, I think again, it's become the mantra lately of "Where are we going? Why are we getting there? How will we get there?" So I'm with you.
Having access to all information that's applicable is helpful. But it's meaningful information more than anything. The tool allows us to ask questions as if you were asking a colleague. So it's less about what trends do we have on mayonnaise? And more about what kind of mayonnaise do millennials eat? And all of a sudden I'm like, OK, great, I have an answer there. What else do I need answers around to help me build my proposition?
So it's definitely ever-evolving as far as having access to information. But to your point earlier it's even that the bigger data that's up there. If you look historically, right, it was just get as much information as I can. You know, I might not need use it today, but I'll use it tomorrow. And moving forward, it's now I have all this information, how do we source it or assess it in a way that's meaningful today to help predict tomorrow?
So, it's like I'm not in the prediction business, but I'm in the prediction business. Where some of that big data that we have allows us to, you know, not predict perfectly. And we don't have a magic eight ball that we can just kind of shake and see what comes up as an answer. But we do have aspects of here's where it might go, here's how consumers might react and are able to build plans accordingly to kind of vet that out.
