Hello everybody, it's Lenny Murphy with another edition of the Green Book Podcast.Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to spend it with myself and my guest.And as often happens, we've got history here.
So Rafael Cespedes is just an amazing man that I have known for about 12 years. The quick story, he invited me to speak at the Chile market research event many years ago.
I had never been to Chile, flew down there, had an amazing, wonderful time with Rafa and other folks like Alex Garnica and other kind of luminaries in the research space.
But probably what's really the key takeaway is that through that conversation, realized that there was an opportunity to create an event series. And that became IX.So really, Rafa is the godfather of IIX.
He and the team down there got us excited to do the things that we've done since then.And as a piece of that, we've continued to do IIX Latin America as an event, which just occurred in Miami.And now we're going to let Rafa introduce himself.
We're going to talk about that event and then the future of the industry in Latin America.So Rafa, welcome.How are you?
Hi Lenny, I'm so happy to be with you again.You know, man, I love you and I learned a lot from you and during this 12 years that, I can say that changed my life a little bit.Oh, okay.Yeah, man.
This experience that we had together was those kind of moment that came in a special moment of your life.I was living,
My first moment without a job, my story came from SEMA that was my own company that was acquired by Sinovate and later Ipsos acquired Sinovate.
And after that, I left the company the same moment that I meet you and you invite me to this crazy adventure to design something because you're so something good in Latin America.
And I really appreciate because from this moment to now, I am another person, really.I am another person.I learned a lot of things.I get a lot of new skills.
And our challenge when we started was to show how brilliant things we could found here in Latin America.But at the end, as what I feel during the last week in Miami, that we build a community.
an inside community and this is a wonderful experience when you have a great community to to live for and we live by that.
Absolutely and you know I think that was kind of so for for the audience as well the thinking was that you know we were
we were building a community of innovators, so people that had a kind of a vision of what the future of the insights industry could look like during a period of pretty significant disruption and transformation.
And, you know, we always think about North America and Europe as these big drivers of innovation.But what I saw in Latin America was a market
that was really interesting, because it was fragmented in many ways, in terms of the geography and, but yet homogenous in culture and language and some of those things.
And there are all these pockets of people trying to do cool, interesting new things.And at that point, mostly mobile first was a, you know, a dominant trend.And how would we channel that
and try and help reinforce it and create kind of cross-pollination with the major markets that were US and Europe into this really vibrant, amazing, emerging market of LATAM.And I am still a huge fan of that idea.And it's working, would be my take.
And I think from the event, where it seems like that community really is making an impact.That vision continues to manifest and make a difference.Is that right?It's right.
It's correct.From the first event that we started in Sao Paulo, in each city that we arrived with the IAX LATAM, we make a change on this local community because we bring to them the
different kind of point of view, different point of view of the industry, the technology that work with us during all this journey that we must to adapt always on that.
And today we can see that in the different countries that we run on the UX, today we have a community more technical, more adapted to this, and they want more.
And for that, we push after five years that we didn't have an unprecedented event for COVID, for well, the economy situation, whatever.We retake that in the point that we live, that was Miami.
Miami is not the point of ending, it's a point of start this new era of IAX LATAM, because we have the challenge
to see the Latin America potential, not only in Latin American countries, it's with Hispanic in the state that they are changing the culture right now.
I think it's a great opportunity to see all those folks that are, we are mangoes, but we are not the same as a title of a presentation in Miami said, but we have this diversity and very interesting opportunity
to put value on our Hispanic Latino community.
So how have you seen things change?Well, we'll talk about IX Latam in Miami in just a minute, but let's set the stage here from that, those early days of, that we had described kind of 12 years ago on where things were shifting, kind of encapsulate
what you have, the trends that you have seen change in Latin America as a whole, certainly the Latin American market from an insight standpoint, and how that's influenced North America or other parts of the world.What's your take as the expert?
You know, in the, in our beginning, as you say, the mobile first was one of the trends, but we have another big trends like cheaper, faster, and better.
And for myself, those was one of the worst moment of our life, because... You're from a qualitative, consultative business, right?Yeah, because we push a lot of the technology arrive to the industry.
We try to use the budget for that and all these kind of things.But it was a very good moment for the Latin American general. because this trend pushed us to start to see our industry in a different way.
It used to be just a consultant, pen and paper interviews and the qual has less relevance in that moment to the quant.We normally say that 20 to 80, 80 quant, 20 qual.
And today we can see that the world changed and today all those insights that this award It's a word that we didn't use too much in those time.Remember that the U.S.
Trade Association changed the name of them when they understand that all those learning from the studies, we must adapt to the business of our clients.And this is an insight.It's an idea that you can apply in a business.
That kind of things change the thought leaders in Latin America also. Because we must move to this new concept of our industry.
We still sell focus group and survey, but I think we have a better proposal for that because we are here to make better business, better world, better satisfaction of necessity of the people.
We put the person in the middle and the center of that, all those things changes. I don't know if I answered your question, but you did.
And the same trends here, right?Which, and I think what's, what's interesting about that is you think, you know, we just get tunnel vision and we think about the U S and, and, and Europe, right?
Where, and we even use these terms emerging markets, for instance, for Latin America, for, for Africa, even Asia.And that's.
more of a methodological perspective, recognize that in some areas face-to-face and some of those approaches are still absolutely applicable.But technology leveled everybody up, right?
And the ubiquity of technology and allowed for, again, this kind of cross-pollination and creativity where we take these same tools, but apply them to the specific cultural appropriateness, I guess, in each country or region.
The learnings from that, I think particularly, here's an observation about Latin America.My perspective is people matter in Latin America, right?Relationships matter a lot.It is about connectivity.
It's about social connection, but we need cheaper, faster.So how do we leverage the technologies in a way that we get the cheaper and faster, but we also reinforce that social connectivity? And that's helped, I think.
It's helped other parts of the world realize that we're not robots, right?We can't just turn everything into, you know, this kind of very quantitative structured component.
And instead we've seen the growth of putting the person first as part of the technology.
When you say these kind of words, it came to my mind one of the concepts that we use in this conference in Miami.That is the orange economy.
I don't know if you are familiar with the orange economy, but for our countries, it's something that is taking a lot of power in our actions, because it's the only way that we are equal with the developed countries.
If we, with the talent, work their minds in developing games like you really love them.Or for example, you start to, if you write a nice book and can get an impact in the world, or maybe a podcast like this one, it's part of this economy.
And the marketing research industry is also one of the, these tools that in Orange economy can make the difference because we are using our brain.And today the technology is more accessible for everyone.
Today, 12 years ago, it was impossible to imagine that we could use the tools that were starting in Europe or US.But today, we can access them.In this moment, the AI that we're going to.Yeah, dude, that was coming.
You know, in Latin America, it's going faster than in so many other countries.Why? because we need to be on this boat as soon as possible.We need to use this kind of tools if we want to be in the same road that Europe and North America is.
Chile, for example, I know I am from Chile and I can put maybe in two more value what we do, but Chile is one of the most important country in Latin America that's growing faster using the AI on the business.
The government is giving a lot of opportunities today to do that.They are investing a lot on those.But when I say that is because it's the way.
And I am seeing in this from our IAX events that we are getting in an equal opportunities moment for these kind of things.And I think we are making the magic.Yesterday, sorry that I go back again, but yesterday we received
a wonderful emails that I copy and I copy you on that.I don't know if you have time to translate that, but I received an email from a thought leader of the industry that she lived in Miami for a long time.She worked in a huge company.
I can say the name of the company or if they are not paying for the sponsor, I cannot say.That's all right.Give her the shout out she want to give to. It's Visa.It's Visa.
And Paola Warren, she sent me a note that she gets very impressed of what we build on that because we exceed her expectation on the content, on the people, of the conversation that we have on the networking moment.
She's from Colombia, but she lived a long, long time here in the U.S.And these kind of things, when we started, we say, well, we want to bring this new bribe to the state.And I remember that Stan said, OK, but you must do the same in the states.
If not, we are not going to support that.And we must run in a very short time.The first one was in Philly, I remember, in the US.Well, and I think we make more than we expected because the communities start to understand our initial challenge.
And now they take the wheel.They are moving this industry.
I am enjoying the ride.So moving to, we'll get into the event, right?The idea of shifting to Miami when it's IX LATAM was very much to symbolize they're not two different markets anymore, right?They are merging.
And as you said, you know, early on, the Hispanic market in the United States is growing and growing. and we need to start thinking about it from a cultural standpoint versus a geographic boundary standpoint.
That does not mean that there's not still obviously things that are specific to different countries within the region, of course there is, but that melting pot component is just accelerating in many ways and that should create the opportunity for scale, right?
The good news is as the Hispanic market merges more within the broader North American and U.S.specifically market, it becomes critical for us to now incorporate that in and think about the specific cultural elements that are necessary in the U.S.
to engage with the Hispanic market.And who better to show us how to do that than the folks that have been doing it all the time, right?I mean, you are the experts in how to talk to
other people in the Hispanic market, and that is a skill that we need desperately here in the United States, as well as leveraging all that kind of can-do attitude that you've manifested for years, the market has manifested, in creating new technologies and new solutions that are just accelerating.
So that's kind of my take.Did you see that?Was that felt at the event?Was there that sense of, okay, it's time to really connect these things up? versus having them just kind of stand out alone?
I can say that was my initial idea when I talked with Lukáš about that.I think Lukáš was too much agree with this moment.And I prepared a document.I remember trying to try to convince him to do that.And the people came the same way like Lukáš was.
The people came because they were curious. We didn't get too much sponsor for the event initially.The people came as assistant to see what is going on here, what those guys are doing here in Miami.
And after today's event, the people understood the idea.It's not that we are going to come to the state to run our own business.It's not that.It's we can help to the local industry
to understand better the culture of the people that came in first, second, third generation from Latin America.
And also we can be helped from the people that is working in the Hispanic market in US to do the things better, faster, and better in Latin America.I could feel this connection is started. is the first spark.It's not something called solidarity.
But the people, the community, they really feel comfortable with this connection of these two worlds.And they want more.They want more.
And when I asked them if they prefer to return to Latin America or we can leave the event there, most of them, they said, leave this event here, man.It's not only for Miami.Miami is a great place to go ever.
But it's that we can arrive to a place like at the Mecca, we can go together, just one place, nice flight.But also we can invite people from the Caribbean, from the Central America that normally they are out of our normal business.
And I feel that connection.
that interest for a lot of takeaways of the technological stuff, new methodology, new ways to do our job, not only technological, and a lot of things that are news in the industry, like the orange economy, as you said, or like the new masculinity or new manhood, that is something that we really need to talk if we want to connect with those people.
And the other stuff is the ethics with the technology.It's ethical stuff with the technology.I think it's something that we must get involved, and we must have this conversation all together.
Not in Africa, one guy, other guys in Europe, and you in the US.No, we must talk together about that, because we must define rules for this new stage of the industry.We can do this together.
Miami is a good point to start they say they repeat a couple times today, Miami tomorrow the world Well, I agree, I mean I think that the world has changed in a variety of ways and technology is that connective tissue and as well as that that
leveling of the playing field for everybody.It's kind of a universal common factor now in many ways.And now that leaves us with wanting to retain the diversity from a culture standpoint and heritage and, you know, language, all of those things.
But as things by default, we're going to intermingle, right, it's going to mix, and it's going to come together.And we should be leveraging those relationships across the board.And the market is large and important enough.
And of course, the you know, the population is is just rich in so many ways, that, in my opinion, it is worth an event to understand that and to continue to focus on that.So I certainly hope that we continue to do I asked a lot of Tim.
And on a personal level, even though I couldn't make it to Miami, it's a lot easier for me to make it to Miami than to Chile.So I, I'm in favor of that.And we go from there, but let's, what were the high points of the event itself?
I mean, were there some presentations just stood out that you were like, man, that, that just made it the whole thing worthwhile.That was great.
As I told you, I think that we cover different point of view on this event.And of course, I cannot talk about the 35 activities that we have there.
But my top of mind on that is, I think the first context that Martha Villanueva give to us was amazing.She living here for a long time, but she's from Salvador, I think so, was a very good point to start.
Later, we talk about happiness with Marita Carvalho.She's a rock star for a long time in the industry and was amazing to have her there.We have a mix of this young-hood and experience during the event.
We present a model of, well, we, I say we, well, Marcello Orlando present a model of a new brand view that, say,
brand with fans that is very interesting because he wore these things that we were talking, the relationship, how to build real relationship with the consumers, with the person that normally consume.And I think these are the keynotes.
By the way, we have a wonderful moment also with One Rice Star that get the prize of a future lease owner.She was amazing.She makes amazing presentations.Her name is hard for me.Asha Parmar.Asha from CS Face.
You know, when the people arrive to see what this young lady is going to say, and the people stand up at the end and clap and say, you move our feet.And it was amazing.
She talked to ethics, as I told you, a critical point of view on the technological and the AI and this kind of things.
Other thing that was important for me was when you see the way of work in the industry, it changes, I think, to a work with more empathy, where you put a real person in the center of a strategy.
It's something that I'm very glad that this finally happened.We don't talk anymore about products.We're talking about people, and this is great.And our work increase in value on that because we are not methodology anymore.We do methodology.
By the way, we are consultants that help the brands to make a better job, not only make money, that used to be.And the other thing I told you a little bit was the new masculinity.
I think this is this topic that for my company, Provokers, I make the advertising this moment.
It's one of the topics that we are studying.We work a lot about woman and how they're changing their way to work, the opportunities, the equality that was necessary.But today we have men in travel.
We have a man that they don't know really how managing themselves on this new scenario.And I think the brands, must understand that it's a work in progress process.This transition needs to be helped and the brand has a lot to do on that.
Well, I can talk to you about some other trends that I saw, but I think the most important things for me is we have a mix of content that give us a lot of new ideas.And I can see in LinkedIn how the
the people that went to this activity, they return to their countries and they just start to spread the words, like a priest after the mass, and they start to use the contents that they received, and they start to put in their document, or trying to share the knowledge that they received, asking the right question to the audience on this platform.
And I think it's a moment.
And that's the goal, right?To make sure that we've created this, the mechanism for people to be able to, to share and grow and build off of, and, you know, cross pollinate and go from there.
So I'm, I'm thrilled to hear that, you know, that continues because that was the goal.
Sorry, I forgot something very important during the event.We talk a lot of AI, but. We use the AI to talk about more things.We talk about the AI as a tool that where we need to, but wasn't the main topic.I think we are moving on, man.
The AI is living with us, but it's one more things in our work life.
Agreed wholeheartedly, right?I think that that, well, let's talk about that for a second.See if that, this has been how it is in LATAM, right?I mean, here in the US there was this, Whoa, holy crap, right?
It could do all these things, this new technology that just was kind of miraculous in the things that it could do.And there was almost a shock element of recognizing all of the hows and the whats, right?The tech itself.
Although I agree, I think we've already went past that. And now it's more of the so what?That's great.We have this technology makes a lot of things amazingly faster and easier and it unlocks lots of capabilities and
that would have just been very challenging from a resource standpoint, time and money to do before.Now it's far easier, that's great, but it doesn't matter.All of that is great from an efficiency perspective, but what do we do with it, right?
I try to watch your program so often and I remember a moment of the year that Every week you say, well, you know, this company started with a new software.But was it the same news with different name?Yeah.
And I'm sure that during the next IAX-EI that we're going to see how mature is this part of the industry.And I'm really happy for that.
Yes, yes.The focus of that event is on use cases and not the, oh, look, we can automatically transcribe interviews and, you know, and that, yeah, okay, got it.We're way past that now.So what, how does it unlock more value creation?
and really enable us to deliver better insights.And that event is going to be the case studies around that.And yeah, is there an opportunity for IXAI in a year from now or two years from now?I don't know.Maybe there is, maybe there's not.
But for now, it's still, it's amazing how many people have not gone there yet, truly. there are still, the adoption level is still very low overall, and that's just mind-blowing to me.
Now it's interesting, so let's talk about that for a second, because you mentioned how the AI has unlocked greater creativity and production in LATAM.So has that, have you seen that across the board?
That maybe there's people glommed onto this because it just created new opportunities that were less resource intensive than were there before?
Well, I think if we look at back five or six years ago, mostly the market research industry has not insight guys that think in bytes, you know?
And now after the other kind of issue, we have people that think in bytes, that they are more tech, more geek.And then it's possible to understand that the AI is a real thing that we can do.Five years ago, we will say, we are not on this party.
It's not my party.But now we can do that.I think the the big elephant that they have issued to move faster.This happened in countries also.Brazil is a huge monster of an industry, and they are moving very slow because it's too big.
The same happened in Mexico.Mexico, the smaller company are starting with some stuff, but the bigger companies, they are sitting in a mountain of gold, making a lot of money on their business way, and they are not rash on that.
But I think countries like Argentina, they must move because they are in the moment of the economy that is pretty hard, and they need to do things cheaper, faster. I'm better right now with the tools that we have.
And I think Argentina is going to give us a lot of surprise on new application on that.Ecuador, Ecuador is another country that many people doesn't know.
They know that Ecuador exists because they are in the middle of the world, but they are given surprise with what they are developing right now.Peru. I am very impressed on that.
For that, I invite you as 10k humans that I love this company because Kerry and the team, they start to look down to this huge 800 million market that is Latin America. And remember, in Latin America, we don't speak only Spanish.
The biggest is Brazil, that they speak Portuguese.Then they need tools, also their language.We need to work for those two markets also.And I think it's these kind of things.If we do this together, we can push the industry faster in Latin America.
And the community in Latin America can push the US also.It's not stopping anymore.
I agree.And even if you step back and look at the, you know, you kind of hit it at the, and geopolitical shifts happening there.Countries like Costa Rica, Argentina, right?We're not to get into their the politics, but there's there's change.
Change focused on economic growth there and in stabilization, it appears.That's exciting, right?To see what what happens when you have that type of energy manifesting in in those countries.
The boundaries are here, are not anymore on the map.
Yeah, very cool. Very cool thoughts.I remember when I was there, we had a lot of conversations of, oh, it's hard if you're in Chile to be able to go to Costa Rica, for instance, right?
Because of, you know, visas and passports and it was kind of a pain in the butt.So it seems like that maybe the lines are opening up across the board.That's great.So Rafa, anything else that you want to bring up or talk about that we didn't touch on?
No, well, you know, you and me, we can stay together talking a lot over a long time.And I think we have a lot of opportunity to keep this conversation.Will be great if we can meet in some moment to talk more deeply on that.
But I think the most important is we, I take the flag of let repeat the event IIX in Miami.I hope so.But if not, if don't, if we must move down, we're gonna keep this conversation in other place. Panama, Brazil again, I don't know.
We're going to see that with the team, but I think we, we break in a boundary with this event and we must keep in that way.And I really appreciate that you invite me to talk right now and we can promote this instance to, to talk.
Oh, one thing that I forgot.My friend, Alex Garnica and myself, we start with this, uh, books, digital library, that was a very good idea that we receive a support of behaviorally, that they support the idea.
And today we have 30, 32 books on this library.The idea is to increase that, invite all the community, the English speaker community, the Europe people, maybe the Asian, why not?
Asia Pacific, invite to share their books, the books that they write, and all those members of the community, and we can leave a space in some channel in greenbooks.org, where we can put that.It's not for selling books.We are not going to sell books.
The idea is that we can say to them, boy, this book is in English, is in Spanish, is in German.You can get this book directly with the author.This is the name.This is the description.Or you can go to Amazon with this link and you can download it.
I think the idea is to show to our community, to insect community global, that we have a great authors that are moving our feet.
Oh, well, one of the presentation that I really love it was when the one author that work in Mars, Deepa, Deepa, Deepa, Deepa, Deepa. I have his name in some place, I have his name, but it was the best presentation for me.
And also I received a book as a present.And I think Sandeep Das, a great, great book that I'm reading right now.And he talked in this book about how to use the storytelling to create new scenarios, future scenarios.And I love it.
And I think we have a lot of information that our colleagues and friends are leaving there in their books.And we can exchange this knowledge through eating those books.And this is the last point.Thank you for asking that, Eleni.I forgot that.
Yeah, no, that's a great point.We should be collating and collecting all of the creativity and knowledge from from folks in a more substantive way than just like the blog or whatever the case may be, your podcast.So that's great.
So Rafa, how can people contact you?
Well, you can find my, find me in social network as a Rafa Cespedes, as you said.Uh, of course, I am part of the Greenbook family and you can wrote me at Rafa at greenbook.org.I think it will be the easy one.Um,
The the the provokers email is a little bit more complex, but it's Rafa that says Rafa that says at provokers site with one S in the middle of that call for that I prefer that you can use Rafa at the green book that are and.
Go ahead, contact me and we can have a very nice conversation and we can design the future of our industry in a great conversation.And later we can bring those to our IAX event.
Absolutely.And if you're ever lucky enough to go to Chile and to have barbecue with Rafa, absolutely encourage you to do that.
Yeah, good wine, good barbecue. That was, uh, I still cherish those, uh, cherish those memories, Rafa.So quick, a quick shout out.We, uh, we also have another podcast episode featuring Martha from AQR, who is a speaker at Latham.
So this is not the only Latham focused episode that you will get. And listeners, let us know if you went, let us know what you thought, or if you didn't go, let us know what would make you go, right?We're obviously in planning stages for next year.
So with all that said, shout out to our sponsors, shout out to Natalie, shout out to Big Bad Audio, and most importantly, thank you to our listeners because
without you, and Rafa and I would not necessarily have had the time to have this conversation, and I think that it was well overdue, and hopefully you found value out of it as well.So, that's it for this episode of the Green Book Podcast.
A big hug for you, for everyone.
Thank you, Rafa.All right, everybody, take care.Bye-bye.
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