Tag: EyeSee

Navigating the AI Revolution: Insights as the Lighthouse industry of the Global Economy 

Posted on by sandra

by Joris De Bruyne, CEO at EyeSee

This year’s Davos World Economic Forum was the first time the Market Research (MR) industry has been granted a seat at this high table. 

In this article, I will provide you with the key takeaways from my visit to the Insights Lighthouse program, but more importantly, I will try to map the position of our beloved nerdy MR Industry and data-based Insights as essential tools for understanding and shaping the economy of tomorrow that will be greatly influenced, and already is, by … AI. 

Davos: the meeting point of extraordinary power  

Although Davos appears to be a distant and inaccessible world, my impression was that connecting and reconnecting was one of the core values of the “Rebuilding Trust” theme this year. This is supported by the fact that almost all major sessions were live-streamed.  For me, introducing and building connections and relationships started even on the train to Davos, where, after meeting delegates from Sri Lanka, France, … among others, I met with my esteemed colleague Joaquim Bretcha, ESOMAR’s General Director, with whom I would share the panel stage later that day. 

Upon arrival, like two kids in a candy shop full of amazement, Joaquin and I explored the main promenade. While the main forum happens in a “gated castle”, we spotted excitedly along the promenade various pavilions including national / local governments like Digital Saudi, India’s Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Emirates, …  but also major tech firms like Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Palantir, … and academic (MIT, NUS, ETH, …) hosted exhibition pavilions on AI like AI House, Builder AI, and many more. So, even Davos’ landscape sent a clear message: high hopes for the transformation of the economy into a more resilient economy of the future will happen through the techy pathways and neural networks of AI.

So, one may ask the reasonable question – what is the market and consumer behavior research role in all of this? The mission of MR in general is to always be a “Lighthouse” and navigation tool for businesses that aim for sustainable growth. There are many paths business decision makers can take when fixing the challenges coming in the way of that growth. That is why companies like EyeSee offer insights-based solutions and help understand consumers’ behaviors and true needs. We are here to give the business recommendation based on a deeper and more unbiased understanding of the main business drivers – human needs and desires.       If we take this as a framework for thinking about the economy and the global need for finding ways of integrating AI into businesses, both internally and externally, we can see how the connections between AI, MR, and improving business for a more stable economy are being formed.    

The Insights Lighthouse illuminating takeaways: Humanizing AI

Thanks to initiative and entrepreneurship of “LinkedIn Insights Top Voice”Dr. Liubov Ruchinskaya (Electrolux & ESOMAR), a group of likeminded and passionate Insights professionals gathered around the “Insights Lighthouse” event.

The Insights Lighthouse, Business Growth Catalysts consisted of three panels, all centered around the topic of AI in the service of business growth:   

The first session, “Pioneering Business Growth in Today’s AI-driven Economy” delved deeper into the realization that being data-driven alone is not sufficient and that insights play a crucial role in decision-making. Speakers acknowledged the role of AI in making decisions faster but recognized its limitations, especially in providing the “why” behind decisions. Lastly, they sent a message of encouragement to Insights professionals to be bold, proactive, and comfortable with being uncomfortable since it is their role to challenge the old patterns to bring growth forward.

The second panel, “Unleashing Cutting-Edge Innovation and Insights for Corporate Success,” also emphasized importance of creating a culture of innovation through risk-taking, education, diversity, and idea-sharing while reminding us, through examples in FMCG, Pharma and MR Industries, that multidisciplinary teams including different functions and external partners are important for learning and innovation. A sentiment that stood out and resonated with me, by Olga Komleva (Colgate Palmolive) “To spearhead the culture of innovation, leaders need to:Unlearn. Reskill. Transform. Re-Invent.” 

And finally, our session “WORKWISE AI: Exploring AI Transformative Power, Risks & Opportunities to Impact the Future of Work” shed light on the impact of AI on internal management, with speakers talking openly about how they use AI to improve their work efficiency and the points where AI simply cannot overtake human input. This deeper understanding of the topic came from the fact that, like EyeSee, most of the companies represented by speakers already leveraged technology in their production processes, so AI is not that unfamiliar ground to begin with.

That is why I agreed with Joaquim’s call for caution against perceiving AI as a god-like entity, which also stressed the importance of human input and creativity. I pointed out the accessibility and ease of use of AI tools, especially for day-to-day operations, by giving an example from EyeSee.  

Augmented roles can free up time for creative human lead analysis, which allows to focus on storyline, conclusions & recommendations for the client. If we remember, according to Oxford University, humans are still outperforming AI in terms of understanding the context, adding emotion to that, and just being grounded in common sense.    

However, AI should not compromise data quality or accuracy, and we must be aware of AI bias and the need for transparency, ownership, and ethical considerations.   

The main takeaways and recommendations from this session, as I see them, are the following:   

  • Embrace new tools, build bespoke models and foster a culture of experimentation. 
  • AI is a tool, not a replacement for judgment. Focus on hiring individuals with good judgment. 
  • Insights professionals have a huge opportunity to leverage their understanding of behaviors and train algorithms effectively. 
  • Companies must be aware of the need to adopt AI or risk falling behind. 
  • Insights professionals can shine in combating the fake reality created by AI by ensuring the quality of data. 

But for me, as the CEO of a scaleup that studies human behavior, I would like to stress that it is not only a chance but also the responsibility of ours and other behavioral market research agencies to use this understanding to train algorithms for AI to serve people and not the other way around.  

Speaking of humanness  

But now, after we’ve dived so deep into the topic of AI, insights, and business growth, let us catch a breath and go back to a wider perspective. The panel ended with a Q&A of Pranjal Sharma on his best-selling book, “The Next New: Navigating the 5th Industrial Revolution,” giving us a broader perspective and once again pointing out the danger of biases that can result in rising inequality among people. First of all, we shall be aware that biases occur, that’s step nr1! Also, 2024 sounds exciting to him as he predicts that Mobile AI will be the “new thing.” Last but not least, he reassured us that MR is an “influential industry” which allows us to connect with consumers and generates the key input for corporations to work on their social impact. We have our role to play! 

That is why a visit to the Advancing Equality Together Center was precious. We were hosted by wonderful Kim Flanery-Rye – Founder, Principal DEI and Culture Practitioner at INCLUSION EQUALS and over a drink at the terrace we debated further and were reminded once again that a good leader sets the example by being: Empathetic, Compassionate, Kind & Paves the way. 

And, as the cherry on top, thanks to Jean de Gheldere, we were able to join the evening session at the Belgium house which hosted a speech of Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and an interesting conversation between John Blood (AB Inbev) & Adrian Cooper (Oxford Economics) on the Economic contribution of the Beer industry.

Always good to reconnect with my homeland and be reminded that Belgium is where EyeSee’s story began, and it is now expanding globally, with Davos as one of its futures regularly visited destinations along the way!   

Interested in reading more about Eye See? Here is an article about our 11-year-old evolution and what we learned from it.

    11 years of growth, 3 lessons for the MR industry  

    Posted on by sandra

    by Joris De Bruyne, CEO at EyeSee

    November is a special time of year; we summarize our insights and consumer behavior trends, workshop plans, and vision boards for the year to come to pin down the increasingly unpredictable (business) future. My mind inevitably goes back to the first ever bucket list EyeSee made in 2012 even before I joined Olivier and the initial team. The team that won me over with their big idea, passion, and dedication they already put into setting the foundation of what we see today. There was only one item on their agenda; launch a platform that would map the eye gaze using webcam and therefore exclude the need for central location testing.   

    Although our young core team knew what the goal was, we were yet to understand many things about how the market operates or where we could play our best hand. To say that our initial business strategy needed fine-tuning would be very generous. Thanks to key forward-thinking clients such as Lidl and Smurfit Kappa, we understood that we needed to bridge the technology and insights gap with an integrated offer. 

    11 years, 150+ team members, 7 global hubs and countless insights projects for leading clients in our key major industries, I find myself at the helm of the organization. The paradox is that I have way more unanswered questions now than I had in 2012, I’m empowered by the knowledge we’ve picked up as a team along the way. Our strategy is clear and still follows our initial compass of combining scalable behavioral methods.   

    Reflecting on our path to sustainable growth, here are three crucial lessons. May these insights inspire and ground your journey to expansion!  

    Big idea? Innovation is a marathon, not a sprint. 

    In 2012, Olivier Tilleuil (EyeSee’s founder) reflected on different consumer research approaches and noted two things.   

    Firstly, most shopping decisions are made in a split second and subconsciously; however, the go-to framework for researching these decisions were explicit methods. In most cases, respondents are not able to verbalize feelings or reasons behind their decisions, so it’s no surprise that surveys ended up being effective in predicting consumer behavior 6 out of 10 times; a little better than rolling the dice.   

    Secondly, methods measuring behavior such as eye tracking (mapping the eye gaze) or facial coding (mapping emotions) gave higher predictivity but were cumbersome and commercially inaccessible.   

    Developing online Eye Tracking was our first major win which solved the challenges Olivier keenly observed. Very quickly after, while working with our first clients, we were pushed to go beyond eye tracking – facial coding, interactive shelves, and many more methods were launched to meet the research needs of those determined to stay on top of the market. 

    Innovation doesn’t stop with the big idea; rather, it is more like an initial bang that will start the chain reaction of transformation and innovation. If it doesn’t provide that “big bang” one may ask, was it a real big idea in the first place? 

    Trust your instincts in picking partners  

    After our big idea and initial growth and development that led us to travel overseas and open an office in New York, our desire to improve remained strong. However, sometimes, especially when growth is rapid, companies require the assistance of true allies and visionaries. Someone who sees all the possibilities while keeping a bigger picture in mind.  

    In our case, that kind of validation, support, and knowledge came from the main investors, ING Corporate Investments, and Smartfin , who acted as our strategic financial partners.

    The capital raised was resourcefully invested into building an R&D team, expanding our commercial and operations teams, revamping our organizational structure based on multidisciplinary client pods with agile support teams and opening new markets.  We ended up operating on four continents and providing insights in50+ markets, thanks to our openness and the vision and faith our clients placed in us. We expanded and opened new offices in Mexico and Singapore, all while dealing with a global pandemic. Such results wouldn’t be possible if we were in it alone.  

    The partnership was grounded on these solid pillars; trust, and a curiosity for developing new tech that would enable us to take the unbeaten path. 

    When in doubt, always set your course forward 

    While looking back is grounding, a more important question is – what’s next? If priorities need to be set – what serves the future, as opposed to what we are doing now?   For EyeSee in particular, we plan to continue leading the social media insights game. Our massive collaboration with TikTok in 2023 resulted in the largest behavioral study done on the platform; by testing 60 ads by 20 brands across categories, we were able to discern creative guidelines. 

    Cultivating technology is part of our company’s DNA so, for example, it is not surprising that we have released deep learning instead of a machine learning based algorithm for our Eye Tracking methods. Obviously, we are taking that forward across platforms to Mobile. We are also developing a Client Collaboration platform so that our operational efforts can progress smoothly and make insights for our clients more easily accessible with as little friction as possible.  

    All these priorities are directly inspired by our clients’ needs. Client-centricity is not only healthy but a key ingredient of success. Stop, listen, collaborate and iterate; it will make you ten-fold better. So, in the future, I see an amazing team of multidisciplinary talented individuals sharing curiosity and eagerness that we are today, to keep making a difference in the exciting market research space of tomorrow.  

    Interested in diving deeper into consumer behavior knowledge, tune in and follow our podcast you can acquire here.

      Growing EyeSee: Joris De Bruyne and Marija Djordjevic to lead the new era of insights

      Posted on by Ammar Zafar

      After 10 years as partner at EyeSee, Joris De Bruyne is taking over the role of CEO from founder Olivier Tilleuil, who moves to an EyeSee Board position. The EyeSee mission remains the same – and our team continues growth as a global leader in behavioral insights!

      Over the past decade, Olivier Tilleuil’s vision grew a small Belgian start-up in Ghent into a scaleup of 150 employees across 7 offices, conducting research in over 50 countries worldwide. What started off as a webcam-based eye-tracking idea, evolved into a global tech enabled behavioral research leader, blending top notch implicit and explicit methods. Check out our decade-long journey in more detail here.

      Joris De Bruyne joined EyeSee in 2013, partnering with Olivier to develop proprietary tech and build up commercial capabilities. He has been instrumental in securing the 2020 capital round and supporting the R&D department to innovate, customize agile models, and cater to our clients’ needs.

      In line with EyeSee’s steady growth, the Board of Directors recognized Joris De Bruyne as the right man for the job of preparing the organization for the future and appointed him CEO. President of the Board – Wouter Verlinden, shared thoughts on the change: “The Board is convinced that Joris and the EyeSee team are eager and ready for what’s coming up next considering the insights expertise, tech advancement and new organizational structure .”

      Commenting on his new role, Joris shared:

      EyeSee is seeing another leadership change, with Marija Djordjevic, former Product Director at EyeSee, being appointed as the Head of Crafts. Commenting on her new role, Marija said:

      We are proud of where we are today and ready for what’s coming up next! Our unique tech-enabled formula for behavioral insights is explained here.

        Agile tech team is a secret MR weapon

        Posted on by EyeSee Research

        From the get-go, EyeSee’s mantra was to make consumer insights accessible by jumping outside of the traditional research bounds and going completely online. Starting with a webcam-based eye tracking tool, all the way to today’s custom virtual testing environments enabling the most predictive insights – our team of experts developed a whole different tech-enabled mindset that continues to guide our approach to research a decade later.

        So, we sat down with Aleksandar Velikić, our Head of Growth, to understand how you keep the spark for innovation alive, what goes into empowering your team to grow further and unconventional ways to support organizational transformation:

        What makes market research tech-enabled?

        In a broader sense, a tech-enabled company is any company whose key output is technology, which bases its competitiveness on the use and innovation of tech and gathers experts.

        From the very beginning, we have been utilizing tech to improve, speed up and make consumer research accessible at EyeSee. Exactly ten years ago, we developed an application within which we can map and monitor eye movements of study respondents via their computer webcams. This was a huge step forward in the industry – until then, it was necessary for respondents to personally come to a central testing location in order to be a part of a research project.

        Studies for commercial clients became faster, and the quality of the results was improved due to the larger number of respondents being included by conducting research this way. For example, you can get an eye-tracking test and a report in about two weeks, while previously, such research would have taken up to several months.

        After eye tracking, we developed other methods, such as facial coding and virtual shopping – and clients recognized this. Today we cooperate with global brands, such as Microsoft, Google, L’Oréal, Heinz Kraft, Danone, TikTok and others – all from several hubs in London, Paris, New York, Singapore, Mexico City, Ghent and Belgrade.

        Our interdisciplinary R&D team is the second largest team at EyeSee, and as it turns out, even our more traditional competitors are slowly establishing the so-called automation or innovation teams as well!

        How to reel in top-notch tech experts?

        You draw in a tech-savvy workforce, like any other, with a human approach to work – provide proper working conditions and opportunities to be a part of exciting projects in which they see purpose and a chance to do something that will make a difference. Right now, paralyzing and demotivating myths about developers, such as exorbitant salary expectations, and the pressure on recruiters to “sell” the team or company to candidates, are circulating within the industry. These have proven to be quite harmful since it prevents us from considering the necessary conditions for tech experts and the new benefits we can offer them.

        Three years ago, our technology team had only 3 developers, while today, there are about 30 members who work on the frontend and backend, we have a machine learning team, DevOps, a team of QA testers, several project leads and other experts trained to function according to agile, iterative principles. And in the future of EyeSee, this team will only continue to grow!

        Therefore, you appeal by building a healthy company that reflects its attitude toward employees and has a non-toxic work culture. And if, along the way, you are offered to work on something thrilling, like eye tracking and facial coding, knowing that the fruits of your labor will interact with the world’s biggest brands in the US, EU and APAC – I must say that it’s not too bad of a deal!

        How to retain them and stay competitive?

        The post-pandemic time has pushed many to think in the direction of life changes. Our motto has always been: “Anyone who wants to explore other options should do it”. We trust our colleagues that they can decide for themselves what is best for them at that moment, and it is up to us to constantly optimize the environment in which they work while members of our team. EyeSee, under the pressure of client demands and growth, is continuously being transformed organizationally. And so, many are motivated to change, grow and continue to stay in such a dynamic environment.

        During organizational transformations, horizontal moves are also one of the ways in which employees get a chance to try something completely different. For example, throughout EyeSee’s history, our colleagues have moved from creative teams to tech teams and vice versa, providing novelty and a different set of long-term business goals.

        One of the tools we have been using since this year are retention interviews, during which we want to identify what it means the most to employees and why they are part of the team. To our surprise, many responses relate to conditions that have nothing to do with money – such as stress reduction, relief, human connections and support. Basically, our strategy is not to retain anyone but to move forward together – for some, this means staying at EyeSee, and for others moving to another environment. Both choices are correct.

        Also, the average employee at EyeSee (27-33 years old) has “aged” in the past 10 years, so priorities change even at different ages. Juniors and younger people, perhaps, tend to lean more towards material means in the beginning, and later, when families are created, some non-monetary benefits, support, health and vacation days become significantly more important factors.

        Want to read more about the practices that shaped EyeSee? Check out the 10 turning points that defined our approach to consumer research!

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