Editor’s Word: The next interview encompasses a GreenBook Future Checklist honoree, Marlena Mattei. The GreenBook Future Checklist acknowledges management, skilled development, private integrity, ardour, and excellence within the subsequent technology of client insights and advertising and marketing professionals throughout the first 10 years of their careers.
Introducing Marlena Mattei of Pearson
Marlena Mattei is College of Pennsylvania graduate and a Shopper & Cultural Insights Senior Strategist at Pearson. She is captivated with rising the neighborhood and dealing to bolster the business by way of mentorship and thought management. She has steadily developed modern and artistic methodologies, instruments, and analyses and offered them at business occasions together with the QRCA and Insights Affiliation. She is at present engaged on growing a framework to higher perceive the relationships between complicated private drivers, which she plans to share when it’s full.
With a cultural anthropology background, she has developed a novel perspective and skillset to take consumer-centricity one step additional and perceive not simply the buyer, however the complete HUMAN — together with cultural and environmental forces shaping their experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. She fuses creativity and analytical considering, permitting her to develop modern strategies and evaluation frameworks, together with distinctive mixed-methods analysis drawing from totally different fields of thought.
What’s a enjoyable reality about your self that will shock individuals to know?
I began doing analysis after I was a cultural anthropology pupil on the College of Pennsylvania. My curiosity in public life and utilizing remark as a analysis device led me to work on some… unconventional initiatives. I as soon as volunteered at a up to date artwork museum the place I bought to be a part of the exhibit – observing individuals observing me. Throughout one other challenge, I spent a complete summer season on the Philadelphia Zoo – watching individuals watching animals. You could find my contributions in my professor’s guide, American Zoo. Each of those initiatives had been such distinctive and enjoyable “meta” experiences. I really feel fortunate to have labored on them, and they’re positively conversation-starters. And yet one more enjoyable reality – I haven’t visited a zoo since that challenge!
What are three abilities you consider to be essential to reach market analysis and why?
Past foundational abilities like analytical considering and emotional intelligence, I’ve discovered that essentially the most profitable insights professionals are likely to excel in a couple of extra nuanced areas:
- The willingness to query your personal assumptions: That is so vital in our work; it permits us to be extra empathetic, artistic, and modern. It challenges us to assume past what’s and begin to think about what could possibly be.
- The power to determine and talk essentially the most vital insights: I constantly hear from colleagues inside and out of doors of insights that one of many greatest challenges they’re dealing with is coping with the overwhelming quantities of knowledge they encounter. It’s crucial to not simply know the way to gather and current information, but in addition the way to join crucial elements to a corporation’s objectives and the way to talk it successfully, so it doesn’t get misplaced within the sea of knowledge. Storytelling is a good ability to hone for this.
- The power to forecast and plan for the long run: With the ability to assume past the current and provides strategic suggestions based mostly on seemingly future eventualities is changing into more and more vital. This requires a deep understanding of rising cultural shifts with the intention to assist anticipate how the panorama will evolve and what a corporation must be ready for. And even inside our personal analysis and insights business, know-how is quickly altering and it’s essential that we’re adaptable and able to reap the benefits of these developments.
How do you advocate for others in your crew or your prospects?
Advocating for individuals is one in all my priorities and intently aligns with my values, so I’m fortunate to work in an business the place it’s so pure to do that since our toolbox is de facto well-equipped for it. We use information which might reduce by way of bias to assist individuals perceive the realities of others. We use empathy to know views, challenges, and motivations. We use storytelling to create highly effective narratives that may assist propel change. Personally, in my work, I’m continuously asking – how can we higher perceive what our customers really feel, need, and wish? What’s going on of their lives, even past the place they contact our manufacturers? How can we make their experiences higher by being extra seamless and human-centric? And this extends to the individuals I work with – understanding their experiences, objectives, and challenges permits me to higher advocate for them and champion their work.
