This podcast is being done in conjunction with Qual360 North America. The conference will be held on March 8 and 9 in Washington DC at the Gallup World Headquarters. This year’s theme is empath, diversity, and resilience. Similar to last year, I will be hosting the event and I would love to see you. To learn more, check the show notes or just DM me on LinkedIn. Our guest today is one of the speakers at Qual360. Linda Mielnicki Light, Associate Director of Global Insights Connect and Gifting Portfolio at Mars Wrigley. Mars is an American family-owned multinational manufacturer of some of the world’s most iconic products including M&M’S®, SNICKERS®, ORBIT®, EXTRA® and Skittles. Prior to joining Mars, Linda served as a senior insights leader at Con Agra Foods, FedEx, and McDonalds and started as an intern at Coca-Cola. Find Qual360 North America Online: Website: https://na.qual360.com/ Find Linda Online: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindamielnicki/ Website: https://www.mars.com/ Find Jamin Online: Email: jamin@happymr.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jaminbrazilTwitter: www.twitter.com/jaminbrazil Find Us Online: Twitter: www.twitter.com/happymrxp LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/happymarketresearch Facebook: www.facebook.com/happymrxp Website: www.happymr.com Music: “Clap Along” by Auditionauti: https://audionautix.com This Episode is Sponsored by: HubUX is a research operation platform for private panel management, qualitative automation including video audition questions, and surveys. For a limited time, user seats are free. If you’d like to learn more or create your own account, visit hubux.com. [00:00:00] Jamin Brazil: Hey, everyone, you are listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. This podcast is being done in conjunction with QUAL360 North America. The conference will be held on March 8th and 9th in Washington DC at the Gallup world headquarters. This year’s theme is empathy, diversity, and resilience. Similar to last year, I’ll be hosting the event, which I’m super excited about, and I would love to see you, my listeners, there. To learn more about the event, you can check the show notes or you can DM me on LinkedIn, or you can just Google qual 360 North America and it’ll take you right there. Our guest today is Linda Mielnicki Light. She is the Associate Director of Global Insights Connect and gifting portfolio at Mars Wrigley. Mars is an American family-owned multinational manufacturer of some of the world’s most iconic products including M&M’s, Snickers, Orbit, Extra, and Skittles, all of which I stock from Costco regularly. Prior to joining Mars, Linda served as a senior insights leader at ConAgra Foods, FedEx, and McDonald’s and she started her career as an intern at Coca-Cola. Linda, welcome to the Happy Market Research Podcast. [00:01:12] Linda Mielnicki Light: Hi, Jamin. Great to be here with you. [00:01:18] Jamin Brazil: HubUX is a research operations platform for private panel management, qualitative automation, including video audition questions and surveys. For a limited time, user seats are free. If you’d like to learn more or create your own account, visit HubUX.com. It is a pleasure to be able to connect with you. We’ve done so professionally before. This, obviously, is in conjunction with your upcoming talk. But before we get into the actual topic, I wanted to kind of get a little bit more context as a consumer insights professional in 2023. We’re just stepping into the year, finishing up the first month. What is keeping you up at night? [00:01:59] Linda Mielnicki Light: It’s a great question. So for me, I am torn between really two things. Torn between embracing technology. So as we think about the future of market research, I truly feel like we kind of have to get beyond just asking consumers, “What do you think or feel about this?” But really start to tap into some of the technology that’s at our fingertips. Now, when we think about technology, let’s think wearables, biometric feedback sensors, and this kind of thing. That’s the way of the future. And this is probably going to be impacting the way people eat, the way people sleep, how often they work out. And so as I think about that, from a CPG standpoint, I think we need to be very cognizant of that and the ability to tap into those kinds of mechanisms to really understand the full totality of a person. Now, that said, the thing that kind of keeps me up at night is just the fact that you have so much of this data that can be used and manipulated for nefarious purposes. And so as I think about that, there’s just such a responsibility. So the ability to go in and say, “Yes, I want to have wearables. I want to do this and that, broadcast my life everywhere.” That stuff also lives on forever. So technology is a good thing, and it’s a bad thing. So it’s one of the things that keeps me up at night. The other one is, and Jamin, you and I know,...
