If there were a popularity poll in the marketing world, “market research” would rarely make the top ten spots that people would want to join. It is hardly glamorous, it seldom grabs headlines, and it certainly doesn’t get invited to the corner room strategic meets. On the other hand, while brands win awards for campaigns based on insights driven by sound research, research itself does not find a mention in the footnote. And if the final result, a product, campaign, or innovation, is public information, the research document is sealed and confidential. Perhaps that is why I warmed up to researchers more than the research itself. Research has been my ‘weak subject’ — not because it lacked importance, or because Excel sheets and I were never friends, and many research studies lacked the analysis to bring alive actionable points.
My Day at the ESOMAR RENEWAL
So, when I signed up for the ESOMAR RENEWAL event, a gathering of the world’s finest market researchers and insight professionals, after reading an unsolicited mail in my inbox and realising that a good friend, Priya Lobo from Ormax, was leading the initiative, it was more out of curiosity than a well-defined purpose. I was there, not knowing what was being served other than the names of the presenters. It was more out of curiosity than purpose. My understanding of research needed a bit of brushing up. Maybe a quick insight massage could recharge my undernourished research muscle. And thankfully, what I received at the ESOMAR event was not just rebuffing, but short of a revelation.
THE ROI OF AI.
For me, the highlight was the masterclass in balanced optimism — a presentation by Vidya Venugopalan, co-founder of IndsightGig. Her topic: The ROI of AI in Research. Now, I’ve seen enough presentations on AI to last me a few lifetimes, but this one was refreshingly candid. Vidya didn’t overpromise, under-deliver, or paint an AI-powered utopia where researchers become obsolete. Instead, she clearly laid out what AI can do brilliantly (speed, scale, and synthesis), and where it still struggles (context, nuance, and human instinct). The warning was simple: “Don’t wait for the perfect AI tool — by then, it’ll be too late.” For someone like me who has spent more time understanding and co-opting AI than fearing it, it was more than an eye-opener.
GENS
Meenakshi Menon, an advertising veteran turned entrepreneur, turned the lens to a different kind of research and questions: the kind that breathes life into purpose-driven platforms. She re-introduced GENSIXTY — a platform focused on helping seniors reclaim relevance, dignity, and community. What stood out was how research by Ormax was instrumental in fine-tuning the platform offering and how the call for subscription was taken. It reminded everyone that research isn’t just about brand health trackers and ad testing — sometimes, it’s about building something real, from the ground up.
CHILDHOOD DREAMS- NOT MARKET RESEARCH
But if there was one session that truly jolted the room into collective introspection, it was the one by Monika Karamchandani, Insights Leader at Mondelēz International. She opened provocatively: “It is no one’s childhood dream to be a market researcher.” A line so brutally honest, it earned a laugh and a round of applause.
PRIDE
What followed was a heartfelt rallying cry — echoing what Priya Lobo of Ormax and ESOMAR India had said earlier, and what the MRSI representative had underlined through their efforts: it was time for the market research industry to bring back pride and drama. To stop hiding behind acronyms and confidence intervals and instead embrace storytelling, share successes, and show off the impact. Because let’s face it — research has never lacked relevance, only good PR.
Monika argued — and convincingly so — that the future of research isn’t just in data mining or dashboards, but in how we position the profession itself. If we don’t make it aspirational, the next generation won’t come knocking. “Sexy” may not be a word often associated with market research, but perhaps it’s time we change that.
THE SHARK TANK FAME PINQ POLKA.
As for other sessions, yes, the PINQ POLKA presentation did draw a lot of praise. They were on Shark Tank and brought a splash of consumer product entrepreneurship to the stage. But maybe because I’d seen the same pitch on Sony a few months ago, it felt a little too déjà vu for me. Or perhaps my research brain, rebuffed, was now seeking newer dopamine hits.
NET NET.
By the end of my stay at the event, I realised: market research and the researchers are not boring — we just stopped telling the story well. At its best, it is the real investigative journalism for brands, empathy analytics for products, and anthropology for a consumerist world. It sees trends before they become trends, preventing million-dollar missteps. It connects dots that others don’t even notice. And yet it remains under the radar.
And while the event will not lead me to dream of the regression models or insight tree, it certainly will make me think twice before underestimating the insight tribe. Because if ESOMAR RENEWAL taught me anything, it’s this — in a world obsessed with opinion, research might be the only thing that still values truth. Or at least, gets paid to chase it.
As a non-ESOMAR member registered for the event, I can at least share this optimism and the need to re-look at research positively, and ask the marketers to introspect how many of their successes they owe to this field and how rarely they celebrate it with them.
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Aside- I loved the way Pravin Shekar (ESOMAR Council Member, CEO at Krea) laughed and interacted with the rest of the delegates. It was an apt Personal Branding.
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