Shepherd, The Audience Strategy Company ads

Shepherd Dave just got back from The Market Research Event in Denver, where “AI” came up roughly every other word. Here’s what stuck. 1️⃣ Give AI the context. Eli Moore from Burke (formerly head of marketing data at Coca-Cola) shared an AI-readiness maturity model. A bad AI answer usually means the model is missing the context we already have. 2️⃣ Different rooms need different proof. Douglas Healy of Kraft Heinz showed how insights, creative, marketing, finance, and leadership each need their own. 3️⃣ Scope narrow. Reddit’s lead insights pro, Lore Oxford warned that more data can mean context poisoning. Intentional, focused datasets win. 4️⃣ AI speeds up qual, but it cherry-picks. Without specific direction, LLMs pick the themes that seem right and kill the rest. 5️⃣ Stop saying “validated.” Validation happens in the market, not in the research room. It’s probabilistic learning, and the brief is the north star. No pass/fail. Dave tried to save everyone at Shepherd a Zoom by turning this preso into a video. Now it’s “content” in your cute little faces. 🥰 #TMRE #MarketResearch #AIinMarketing #ConsumerInsights #AudienceInsights