ESOMAR Congress 2024: A CEO’s Emotional Journey

Mind, Myth and Machine was the theme for this year’s ESOMAR Congress in Athens, Greece. Inspired by the wisdom created and passed on from the minds that lived on the land where we congregated, the content of Congress challenged us to think in new ways.

Ray Poynter, current ESOMAR President, opened Congress with a speech recognizing the importance of knowledge creators of the past.

Poynter emphasized how the sharing of knowledge across geographies, cultures, and time has been a foundation for human progress, linking it to the importance of the ESOMAR global community.

Within this theme, speakers at Congress offered thought-provoking views that were both visionary and controversial. Papers provided evidence of an engaged community digging deep to discover new knowledge on the drivers of behavior. And the committee curated the content deliberately to activate discussion and establish connections to three key pillars of our profession today: human understanding, storytelling, and technology.

On stage, speakers often sought to inspire wonder with either illustrations of immediate practical applications or grand visions of the future impact of next-gen AI. During these presentations, a consistent current of messages aimed to alleviate the obvious—and understandable—anxiety of the audience. We heard their worries in the serious questions they posed. How do professionals survive in an industry where AI applications are quickly eliminating the value of skilled operational tasks of the past?

The reassurance from speakers often emphasized AI as an empowering and time-saving tool. They reasoned it could increase productivity of operational positions or replace operational tasks altogether, enabling professionals to focus on higher value work. Rather than having a person spend a week building a study and producing data output, that same person could now be the architect—focusing their time on design, insight generation, and storytelling. While many of these benefits are likely to become reality, the different angles and emphases of industry leaders gave the audience plenty of fodder for forming their own perspectives.

In the CEO panel, moderated by past ESOMAR President, Kristin Luck, these contrasting views were on full display.

Steve Phillips, CEO of Zappi, sought to inspire with his message on how Insights is now in the unique and enviable position for a full takeover of the Marketing function. In a world that is racing to create AI that can evaluate market opportunities, generate concepts that will sell, produce compelling creative communications, and optimally place advertising, the owners and organizers of human data will carry the greatest value. That’s us, he argued—and the argument was compelling to many.

Photo Credit: Ton, M. (2024). Day 1 The CEO Forum OAKFIELD [Photograph]. ESOMAR.

Photo Credit: Ton, M. (2024). Day 1 The CEO Forum OAKFIELD [Photograph]. ESOMAR.

Vivienne Ming, from thehumantrust.org, author of How to Robot Proof Your Kids and self-described mad scientist, gave the closing keynote address which inspired with social scientific evidence amassed with assistance of her AI. One case study illustrated the powerful impact of AI applied to human health issues. By analyzing thousands of social scientific studies on postpartum depression, Ming was able to quantify and validate the health issue and provide evidence to support the development of medicinal treatment. This work would have taken many people many months, if not years to complete. And even within that time frame, the human analysts may not have been able to derive the degree of insights generated by the AI tool being directed by Ming.

In addition to visions of greater boardroom influence, operational efficiency, and rapid discovery of human health insights, many speakers explored themes around the core research concerns of validity and reliability.

Mike Patterson from Radius provided a calming reassurance to many through the deliberate scientific evaluation of the value of “synthetic data.” Across multiple studies, the authors compared outcomes from primary human data and data generated via AI trained on human data. In some cases, there was overlap in the insights and conclusions that would be drawn from analyses on the two datasets. In other cases, the conclusions were different—and not subtly. I appreciated the work as an objective evaluation of the merits and potential pitfalls of using “synthetic data.” It is how our profession has historically evaluated advances in measurement and modeling, and I believe it likely resonated with many researchers in the audience.

Photo Credit: Ton, M. (2024). Buffet OAKFIELD [Photograph]. ESOMAR.

The relief provided by both scientific evidence and the comedy from Congress reinforced a point on the use of AI that I believe we need to remember as we take advantage of automated processing and projections from past information. As behavioral scientists, statisticians, and data modelers, we already know that projections made from data that has inherent error (e.g., sampling error, measurement error, instrument design bias) will necessarily increase in its error the farther it gets from its source. For me, this generates feelings of excitement, because deep and accurate insight into human behavior, continually refreshed, is the solve. And this goes far beyond the conscious attitude and behavioral human data we’re proficient at collecting today. We’re just beginning to quantify human emotion and the non-conscious mind. As our industry advances in our ability to understand the unconscious, we unlock an elevated value proposition for our profession in this new age of AI. How wonderful.

Finally, if I had to pick a sixth prominent emotion I felt at Congress it would be pride. I was reminded in Athens of how much I love the way ESOMAR takes the job of underscoring the importance of our profession on a global stage. There were so many meaningful awards and such rigor in the evaluation of quality and the impact of the work. From the YES Awards to the Best Paper Award series to the Research Effectiveness Awards, there was some serious celebration of the significant contributions from our global community. Thank you ESOMAR for holding our collective work in such high regard.

I’ll close with one last piece of inspiration from Congress. Kathy Cheng, from inca Nexxt Intelligence, sought to inspire hope around AI by quoting a great thinker who changed the ways people work with his inventions. At the end of the constitutional convention, Ben Franklin had commented on the image depicted on the back of George Washington’s chair. Cheng asked us to picture it, a half-sun on a horizon with with rays extending into the sky, and then reminded us what Franklin had said. “Now at length, I have the happiness to know, that is a rising, and not a setting sun.”

Sentient was created to bring the best of behavior science to business. We aim to increase empathy for the human condition by advancing knowledge on the drivers of behavior. In this way, we aspire to make a meaningful contribution to the information carried forward to new places in time.