June 1st – hayfever and BBQ season is in full swing, and agency and client relationships are shifting. Here’s what’s happening in the insights and strategy space right now, and what it means if you’re in it.

🔁 Quick Pulse: What We’re Hearing

💬 “I want a role where I actually see the impact of my work – not just send a report off into the void.”

💬 “The agency/client relationship is becoming more transactional.”

💬 “We’re hiring, but we’re so busy we don’t have time to actually hire anyone.”

🧠 One Big Trend: The agency–client relationship is losing its depth

Across the board, insight relationships are becoming more transactional. Briefs arrive fully formed, timelines are compressed, and the expectation is delivery, not dialogue. And while efficiency has its place, something is being lost in the process – the consultative back-and-forth that tends to produce the most genuinely useful work.

For candidates, this shift is shaping what they want from their next role. People at the sharp end are increasingly wanting to see where their work lands and see its strategic implications. That’s harder to offer when the relationship with the client is transactional by design.

What’s driving it: Procurement involvement has increased and budgets are tighter. In a market where insight is still proving its commercial value, speed has become the visible metric. The race to the lowest price point is quietly eroding the space for the kind of thinking clients actually need.

🔍 Method Spotlight: Collaborative Discovery

As a counter to the transactional brief model, some agencies are reintroducing structured co-creation at the start of a project, bringing clients into the research design process rather than receiving a brief and disappearing until debrief.

Why it works: When clients co-own the research question, they’re more invested in the answer. Engagement at debrief is stronger, implementation moves faster, and the agency relationship shifts from vendor to partner. It costs more at the front, and saves considerably more at the back.

👀 Brand to Watch: Ipsos Iris

Ipsos’ behavioural science unit has been quietly repositioning itself as a strategic growth partner rather than a research supplier, embedding consultants into client teams over longer engagements rather than delivering standalone projects. It’s a deliberate move against the transactional grain, and one that’s attracting attention from clients who’ve grown frustrated with report-and-retreat agency models.

📊 Smart Stat

42% of insight professionals say they rarely or never receive feedback on how their research was used after delivery. (Source: GreenBook Industry Trends Report (GRIT), 2025)

The market isn’t broken, but it is changing shape. Here’s what’s actually happening in the insights and strategy hiring space right now, and what it means if you’re in it.

🔁 Quick Pulse: What We’re Hearing

💬 “We’re not adding headcount, we’re protecting it.”

💬 “I’d move for the right role, but I’m not taking a risk right now.”

💬 “The briefs are still coming in, it’s the sign-offs that are slow.”

🧠 One Big Trend: The rise of the “earn the move” mindset

When uncertainty rises, so does the bar for changing jobs. Candidates aren’t disengaged, but they’re discerning. The roles that are cutting through right now share a few things: clear progression, meaningful briefs, and organisations that can articulate why the work matters beyond a job description.

What this means for hiring teams: Vague EVPs and templated JDs aren’t cutting it. The best candidates have options, even in a quieter market, and they’re choosing employers who can sell the substance of the role, not just the title and salary band. The conversation has to earn their attention.

In a stability-first market, you attract the best by making change feel safe.

🔍 Method Spotlight: Skills-based hiring

With junior pipelines thinning and CVs getting harder to benchmark, more insight teams are experimenting with skills-based hiring, assessing candidates on demonstrated capabilities rather than years of service or agency pedigree.

Several consultancies are quietly dropping degree requirements for insight roles, focusing instead on portfolio evidence and scenario-based interviews. Early signals suggest it’s improving both diversity of hire and retention at the junior level.

👀 Brand to Watch: Korn Ferry

The global talent advisory firm has been quietly expanding its research and insight practice, embedding market intelligence more deeply into its talent strategy work. It’s a sign of where the industry is heading: insight capability as a core component of organisational design, not a downstream research function.

📊 Smart Stat

📉 61% of knowledge workers say job security now outranks salary as their primary reason for staying in a role. (Source: Mercer Global Talent Trends)

From the rise of AI explainability to the return of ‘old school qual,’ here’s what’s been shaping the insight space this month.

🔁 Quick Pulse: What We’re Hearing

💬 “Senior stakeholders are buying into AI… but still want to see the workings.”

💬 “There’s fatigue around dashboards, people want decisions, not data dumps.”

💬 “Clients are coming back to qual, they miss the ‘why’ behind the numbers.”

After two years of tech hype, there’s a pivot back toward insight with narrative… not just metrics.

🧠 One Big Trend: AI Explainability Hits the Insight Agenda

2025 saw mass adoption of AI for concept testing, coding qual, and predictive modelling. But now in 2026, trust and transparency are the key concerns, especially when insights are used to shape customer experience or comms.

🧪 Example: Samsung worked with a research agency to pilot an “AI explainability layer” – a human-readable narrative that outlines how and why the model reached its recommendation. This helped align insight with compliance, brand tone, and stakeholder buy-in.

“Black box” AI won’t cut it anymore… clients want to see behind the curtain.

🔍 Method Spotlight: Vox Pop Reels for Instant Storytelling

Short-form video isn’t just for TikTok anymore. Researchers are embracing 60-second vox pops as fast, rich, human-centred data capture.

🎤 Brands are using:

• Selfie-style responses via mobile
• On-street intercepts with social-style editing
• Quick-turn showreels for stakeholder buy-in

👟 Example: New Balance used vox pop reels to test cultural relevance of a brand refresh across Gen Z consumers in the UK and US. The results? Stakeholders described the output as “more convincing than a slide deck”.

It’s qual, but creator-style… human, raw, and powerful.

🚀 Brand to Watch: Pret A Manger

Pret has quietly become a testing powerhouse, using CRM and loyalty data to trial new product lines, formats, and messaging at speed.

In Feb, it launched a micro-test of new vegan breakfast options via app-exclusive offers with instant feedback loops via 2-click polls and purchase behaviour tracking. 4 variations, 1 week, and a decision made.

It’s a lesson in using what you already have to test smarter, not bigger.

📊 Smart Stat

📈 63% of insight teams say they’re “over-reliant” on past data, but only 27% have a proactive plan for live testing in 2026. (Source: Insight Leaders Barometer, February 2026)

The insight edge this year? Being braver in the present, not just smarter about the past.

New year, new insights! With hiring kicking off, budgets locked in, and strategic ambition running high, here’s what we’re seeing across the research and insight world as 2026 gets underway.

🧭 Quick Pulse: What We’re Hearing

💬 “Our 2026 planning is all about moving faster, even if it has to be with fewer resources.”

💬 “We’re under pressure to use existing data before commissioning more.”

💬 “AI is everywhere – we need senior people who are excited about it and can envision how AI can help evolve our proposition.”

Insight leaders are walking the tightrope between automation and authenticity, with speed and stakeholder trust top of mind.

🔍 The Big Trend: Agile Insight Goes “Always-On”

The ‘project-based’ model of insight is being replaced by rolling feedback loops. Instead of standalone surveys or communities, brands are investing in “always-on” listening across social, CRM, product reviews and micro-surveys.

🛒 Example:Superdrug launched a continuous feedback engine across its app, triggering 1–2 question check-ins at key interaction points. This data is visualised weekly, feeding directly into stock, promo and comms decisions.

2026 will reward teams who treat insight not as a moment, but as a muscle.

🛠 Method Spotlight: Mobile-First Qual

With screen fatigue setting in and diary studies losing steam, mobile-native qual is seeing a resurgence… but smarter this time.

📱 Short-form video tasks  🎤 Voice note prompts  🧠 “In-the-moment” reflections over traditional recall

📦 Example:Gü Desserts used voice diaries via WhatsApp to capture how consumers felt about indulgence and guilt post-holidays. The real, unscripted tone uncovered emotional drivers that traditional surveys missed, feeding into packaging updates launching this quarter.

👀 Brand to Watch: IKEA

IKEA launched a co-ideation lab within its loyalty app where customers help design new storage solutions. Members submit photos of real-life space problems, vote on ideas, and get early product drops.

It’s research, community, loyalty and co-creation all in one.

📈 Results:

– 20K+ submissions in first 6 weeks

– 3 product ideas now in prototype

– 15% increase in app engagement

📊 Smart Stat

🧠 Only 42% of brand teams say they regularly activate insights within 10 days of collection.(Source: GreenBook Q4 Report)

In 2026, speed to action will be vital to businesses more than ever.

Q4 pressure is peaking, 2026 plans are crystallising, and insight teams are being asked to do more – faster. From AI guardrails to attitudinal segmentation 2.0, here are four big themes shaping the insight space this November.

🤖 AI Guardrails Become a Strategic Priority

As AI tools become embedded in research workflows, brands are setting clearer boundaries, not just around data privacy, but around decision-making accountability.

Heineken introduced internal AI usage guidelines for research, setting out when AI should support, augment, or be left out entirely. One key rule: AI can summarise but never generate final recommendations without human review. This move followed a misinterpretation of sentiment in early AI-led social listening, which skewed tone-of-voice guidance.

It appears that we are now moving past the AI hype phase, and now many are looking to build smart, ethical infrastructure around it.

🛒 Segmentation Gets Real-Time and Behaviour-Led

Static attitudinal segments are being challenged by live behavioural signals…especially in e-commerce, where consumer needs shift hour by hour.

M&S moved beyond traditional personas to trial “real-time segment activation,” combining first-party data, page journeys, and session recency to adapt homepage content and email subject lines dynamically. A single user could shift between three need states in a day, and personalisation kept up. The result? A 12% uplift in click-through and stronger basket builds.

The new segmentation mindset is less “who are you?” and more “what do you need right now?”

📱 Gen Alpha Enters the Research Chat

Brands are starting to treat Gen Alpha (those born after 2010) as a research-worthy audience in their own right, not just as “kids of millennials.”

LEGO launched a co-creation community for 10–13-year-olds, with fully COPPA-compliant guardrails, moderated online spaces, and a hybrid of drawing, voice, and build-based tasks. Insights from the community fed into 2026 packaging and digital gameplay strategies, showing this age group’s strong lean toward environmental storytelling and mixed-reality play.

Gen Alpha doesn’t want to be marketed to… they want to shape what’s being built.

🧾 ‘Value’ Gets Redefined… Again!

As economic anxiety drags on, the consumer definition of valuecontinues to evolve, and brands are updating how they measure it.

ASDA conducted a mixed-methods study combining digital receipts, time-use diaries, and emotional check-ins during weekly shops. Findings showed that value isn’t just about price, it’s about reducing mental load (“can I get everything here without having to think?”). This insight has informed store layout updates, pre-bundled meal solutions, and smarter basket-building prompts.

The value equation in 2025 = price + time + headspace. Are you tracking all three?

By Cameron Maskell

Halloween has come and gone, campaign season is peaking, and insight teams are digging into end-of-year trends and 2026 planning. So, what’s been brewing across the research landscape this October? Here are four developments that stood out.

💬 AI Moderators Take on Qual at Scale

As online qual grows, AI is stepping in… not to replace researchers, but to support smarter, more scalable moderation and follow-up.

Unilever recently piloted an AI moderator for a week-long online community exploring teen skincare habits across five markets. The AI tool used natural language prompts to probe participants in real time, flag contradictions, and tailor follow-up questions. Human moderators oversaw and refined key threads, cutting analysis time by 40% and improving depth on niche topics.

Takeaway? The human touch still matters, but with AI co-pilots, qual is getting faster, deeper, and more flexible.

🧭 “Second Screen” Ethnography Captures Real-Life Context

Forget scheduled diaries! Second-screen ethnography is giving researchers real-world behavioural insight, in real time.

Just Eat worked with a mobile ethnography partner to capture how people really decide what to order, not just what they say they do. Participants screen-recorded their scroll behaviour on food apps, paired with voice memos explaining their thought process (e.g. “I was craving Chinese, but then the delivery time made me change my mind…”). The data led to UX tweaks and new delivery-time filters now rolling out across the app.

Takeaway? When you see the decision unfold live, the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ becomes clearer than ever.

📦 Research Supports the Rise of Re-commerce

As resale, rental, and return models surge, insight teams are guiding how brands tap into the growing re-commerce economy.

John Lewis launched a second-hand furniture pilot and partnered with an insight consultancy to explore perceptions of pre-owned value. Through on-site pop-ups and digital ethnography, they found that product condition mattered less than storytelling. Consumers valued transparency (e.g. “tell me who used this before”) and sustainability framing more than price alone. The findings led to a test of branded storytelling tags on pre-loved listings.

Takeaway? Research and insights are showing that resale value is about reputation, relevance, and re-framing what ‘used’ really means.

📊 Insight Teams Embrace “Test-and-Learn” Budgeting

As agility becomes a C-suite mantra, insight teams are rethinking how they use and justify budget.

Sky ran a “test-and-learn” budget structure across its research road map this quarter, allocating 20% of spend for fast-turn experiments tied to live business questions. Quick audience pulses and message tests fed directly into weekly creative decisions for an entertainment campaign. The result? Shorter time-to-insight, fewer bottlenecks, and more buy-in from commercial leads.

Takeaway? Insight is becoming a testing engine for smarter business decisions.