Storytelling 2022

09.40 Welcome & extended opening address from the Chair

Caroline Florence, Founder & Director, Insight Narrator

10.00 How a hunger for journalism fuelled Just Eat’s storytelling success

The pandemic changed consumer habits for ever, particularly the way we eat and entertain. In doing so, delivery services and platforms transformed the business models of restaurants. Integral to that shift has been Just Eat.

Grant and Rufus will discuss how ‘The Hub’, a pioneering storytelling approach that translates data and research into stories, has transformed Just Eat’s operations, unleashed internal creative talents, and helped the company capitalise on opportunities ahead of rivals.

Hear what kinds of stories work and don’t, how people consume them and how to get them reading more, and potential new applications of storytelling within a market research setting.

Grant Feller, Journalist & CEO, StoryMakers

In conversation with…

Rufus Weston, Head of Insight, Just Eat

10.30 Inspiring positive change and trailblazing legacy

The FA’s Women’s EURO 2022 Legacy programme inspires positive change by establishing football opportunities for women and girls. It is being delivered across 9 host cities and is upheld by a robust M&E (monitoring and evaluation) framework.  Historically, M&E data focuses on the numbers but forgets about those at the heart of the data: people. This session will demonstrate how through storytelling, The FA’s Behavioural Insight and Business Analytics team is transforming data into meaningful and persuasive case studies which stir emotion, inspire and drive change.  

Join Zaynab to hear how The FA is harnessing the power of the 2022 UEFA European Women's Football Championship to inspire the next generation of players and fans. 

Zaynab Osman, Insight Officer (UEFA Women's Euro 2022 Legacy), The Football Association 
Rachel Pavlou, Women’s Development Manager - Diversity & Inclusion, The Football Association 

11.00 Comfort break

11.20 Telling the story of the metaverse

When few people had heard of it (and fewer really understood it), Starcom needed to help company leaders not just understand the metaverse, but have the confidence to share the story of the metaverse with clients and partners.

Over 8 months, Starcom explored both the story and the most compelling approach to telling it; through a podcast series and a written summary of key findings. The metaverse podcasts have been listened to hundreds of times, providing a depth of engagement that no traditional Powerpoint presentation could have achieved. Hear how this story has united disparate parts of the business to a core metaverse team sharing knowledge and making sure Starcom is at the forefront of this new stage of the internet.

Heather Dansie, Research Director, Publicis Media
Scott Thompson, Associate Insight Director, Publicis Media

11.50 Tell ideas, not stories: pivoting research based expertise to craft ideas that lead to change

Researchers often purport that effective research stories are complex, scripted and require the use of intellectual models and frameworks. Yet storytelling doesn’t need to be overly processed or manufactured. The best storytelling that takes place within insight, is measured on our ability to capture an idea and land a message that allows the audience to understand in their own minds how their business or brand needs to change or shift.

In this session, King will share how they have leveraged storytelling techniques, centred on ideas, to help them influence their stakeholders, fuel behaviour change and boost commercial impact.   

Leanne Tomasevic, Founding Director, Truth
Esperia Stefanidou, Associate Director, Consumer and Player Insights, King
Conor Molloy, Senior Player Insight Specialist, King 

12.20 'Inspiring Action: How to create strategic stories that really make things happen'

Debriefs are supposed to make things happen in a business, but all too often, they don't. Simply reporting insights isn't enough: we need to make them memorable, moving and galvanising.

We'll explain what typically goes wrong and how we can change that by crafting stories that balance structure and emotion.

Stuart Knapman, Strategy, Innovation & Activation specialist, Verve

12.50 Lunch

13.30 Sometimes you need to wear a different hat!

The challenge was to communicate the holistic ‘real life’ human experience of professional cleaning products to an R&D audience to enable empathic design. The solution was a bespoke, collaborative, staged approach which delivered detail & data via a series of ethnographic, experiential video edits bringing the sights, sounds and smells of busy professional kitchens to life! Hear how different technologies including Go-Pro chest cameras, on-site fixed cameras and face to face IDIs helped identify actual behaviour and bring the story to life.

This session demonstrates the need to think differently; we cannot just be researchers, we have to become filmmakers, journalists, and producers too. 

Hannah Rogers, Head of New Business & Client Lead, Blue Yonder

14.00 (Pod)Casting a wide net with the delivery of insights

How can a leading retail brand get to know their customers and make these customer insights digestible for an entire business? Moreover, how do we make the world of insight understandable and relevant through digital channels – no charts, no data tables, no word clouds. Just the power of storytelling…

Sainsbury’s has partnered with Walnut Unlimited to conceptualise, create and promote a new, insight driven podcast called The Customer Closeness Podcast. Hear what impact podcasting insights is having across the whole company and examine the science behind storytelling and why storytelling is so enriched by a behavioural science lens.

Alice Carver, Research Manager, Walnut Unlimited

In conversation with…

Emma Rudge, Customer Insights Executive – Customer Closeness, Sainsbury’s
Kathryn Eastwood, Senior Insight Manager, Sainsbury’s

14.30  Comfort break

14.50 Systems-thinking storytelling

Hear how a new systems-thinking approach unlocked the storytelling power of existing data at Future Housing Group. Through a series of collaborative workshops, Shed Research and Futures brought stakeholders on a journey, helping them focus only on what was strategically relevant. Find out how they worked with senior decision makers to drive real change.

Dan Young, Director, Shed Research Consulting
Melanie Hughes, Research & Intelligence Manager, Futures Housing Group

15.20 How to tell cinematic stories with insight

Chris, formerly an independent filmmaker, will share the narrative and mechanical techniques for creating compelling, video-based research summaries of multiple focus groups and video surveys. He’ll explore the various documentary styles that can be drawn from to meet insight objectives, methods for building a narrative skeleton and the practical considerations for working with video. Finally, he’ll touch on the audio, editing and visual effects techniques insight professional can apply to enhance research stories and uplift production quality for a truly cinematic result.

Chris Martin, CMO, FlexMR

15.50 Pinterest: Inspiration Nation UK - understanding who the Pinterest audience is, what they're interested in, and how to reach them

The Inspiration Nation project set out to shine a spotlight on different Pinterest audience types. This case study will demonstrate the necessity for storytelling to be embedded in research projects from the outset and how fundamental it is in shaping methodology frameworks.

Hear how a team of researchers, designers, and filmmakers worked together from the outset to bring insights to life and how an online community was the gateway to uncovering personal stories, experiences, and anecdotes. ‘Pinterest: Inspiration Nation’ is told using segmentation, narrative, video, photography and infographics.

Fran Lee (he / him), Head of Creative, Sparkler

Sydney Stanback She/Her, Global Advertiser Researcher, Pinterest

16.20 Closing comments from the Chair

16.30 End of day