Insight & strategy using technology, deliver faster results for the business, and increase the impact of insight acting as a strategic adviser to the rest of the organisation. Having the opportunity to in-house the way we work, rather than relying on full-service agencies, is one of the biggest ways you can drive that behaviour change, says Kate Schardt, senior director of global insights digitalisation, who has been heavily focused on digital transformation eorts in terms of changing the operating model, specically for advertising and innovation testing. The shift towards in-housing was a big change for the organisation, particularly when it came to ad testing, because advertising development involves working with creative agencies as well as marketing teams. The company has worked with Zappi to develop its ad testing and incorporate more metrics, including social sharing and cultural risk. For example, PepsiCo crisps brand Walkers used Zappi to test ideas early in the creative process for its 2019 Christmas ad, featuring Mariah Carey. The testing highlighted aws in the execution of the draft advert, and pinpointed areas for improvement, including social risk the research found that some consumers felt the adverts central joke, around taking crisps, didnt t well with the festive spirit. After creative adjustments, the nal edit of the ad increased its scores of two measurements, creative sales impact and creative brand impact. PepsiCo also works with articial intelligence platform Lucy to run a search component on the Ada platform, called Ask Ada, directing individuals to the most relevant tool within the system, based on advanced programming interfaces. For example, if someone wants access to primary consumer research, concept testing or ad testing, they would use the Zappi platform within the system, while Black Swans predictive tool, Trendscope, is also accessible. If you go in and search [via Ask Ada], what do we know about Doritos ad eectiveness around the globe?, it will pull out data that will ow through from those various sources, says Schardt. One of the things PepsiCo uses in its Historical ways of working in market research are now coming up against tech-led approaches innovation process to get a deeper understanding of the occasions when people are having snacks, for example, is the jobs to be done framework. This is an approach to developing products based on understanding the customers goal, or job, and the process they would go through to hire a product to complete the job. An example might be winding down after work you want to put into context when people are consuming food and beverages. So, with food, what would you hire or re for that job? says Schardt. We use a lot of empathy ethnographic tools to get a sense of where we want to play and solve problems with consumers, and then we use our test and learn, like with Zappi, to rapidly ideate based on what weve learned from those other tools, and do quick-turnaround concept testing. Custom vs standardised While PepsiCo still commissions ad hoc research projects, its in increasingly fewer areas, says Gans. The logic that starts with thinking about what constitutes a competitive advantage applies to innovation insights as well as it does to insights that relate to marketing campaigns weve started building an innovation foresights capability that means theres going to be a time when we wont be relying on [external partners]. Historical ways of working in market research are also now coming up against tech-led approaches that are more focused on scalability, creating new dynamics for the organisation. A lot of the tradition in marketing research is custom, small and complicated. In billing, for example, the tradition is that you pay per project, says Schardt. The idea that youre going to customise every project has probably been one of the hardest parts of standardising and automating, and has been an interesting tension weve had with Zappi; at times, its maybe not as exible as people on the ground want. But in the middle, where I sit, youre saying do we really want people to have full customisation? Because, if simplication is the goal, then every project interviewing a very narrow consumer target isnt great. Schardt says the company is now putting a lot of the expertise that would traditionally be the preserve of the insights specialist into technology. Theres less and less of a need to review things such as questionnaires. A few years ago, people were still spending a lot of time doing that, and thats not added-value work. Working with technology suppliers is a dierent experience, she adds. Theyre trying to hold the line as tech companies with a tech mindset of scalability, and that comes crashing into an old-school research mentality when you go to a traditional supplier, they say whatever you want because they are doing everything manually. 30 Impact ISSUE 36 2022_pp28-31 I&S Pepsi.indd 30 08/12/2021 10:03