Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It floors me actually that people are still doing focus groups. She'd like, go talk to that person, go talk to that person. And I would approach them and tell them about the study. We noticed that after people engage in a Tiffany study, 10 of 80 people will go out and buy fine jewelry from Tiffany. And you know, one of the most important findings we've seen recently is that peer to peer, like literal word of mouth, but that is the influence that matters now.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Welcome to The Entrepreneur's output Logbook I'm your host, Zach Bernard. You can find me on social let. It's Zack B. In each episode, I bring on experts from various industries for you to learn about their strategies and insights driving extreme business growth. Today we're joined by Melinda Sana, founder and CEO of looklook, a proprietary consumer insights platform specializing in luxury market research for some of the world's most recognized brands in the world. Melinda spent years inside some of the world top spread agency in New York before noticing something that a lot of people in his space were weren't really like ready to admit that the way that we do consumer research was being done in a fundamentally broken way. So she built something new. In over 15 years, she grew Looklook in a fifth seven figure platform, who has conducted over 900 studies with more than 30,000 participants surveying clients like BMW, Google and Nestle. But their unique approach isn't just a scale. It's how they find the people behind the data. So instead of sourcing third party panel like a lot of firms and companies do, she built what she calls cultivated communities, recruiting participants one relationship at a time. Which includes the Beauty First, a proprietary network of over a thousand high net worth women focused on luxury beauty and a luxury verse built for broader luxury studies. Melinda, it's great to have you on the show. Welcome aboard.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Honored to be here, Zach. Thank you.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: I love it. Well, we've had a lot of like different guests on the show, but one of the industries I think, I mean, I don't think we've ever had anyone in that industry whatsoever was really more like the research space, like market research. And I always find it like interesting because behind like any decision that a company makes, a brand makes you want to have like data to know like what kind of decision you make. So we're going to dive into all of that today. But as this is a business entrepreneurship podcast, one of the things I always like to ask any of the guests that come on is if you had to like restart your company from scratch, knowing everything that you know today because You've been around the block. To put it simply, is there anything that you feel you would do differently that a lot of people get totally wrong?
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Yeah, boy. You know, my philosophy in life is really no regrets. And I think we've. I mean, we've gone through really difficult and painful periods, but they've always helped us, you know, kind of break through to something different and new.
So I think that's just part of entrepreneurship, is making sure that you've got the thick skin enough to kind of keep walking, keep fortunate ahead through those difficult times.
I think at times, I guess one thing I might have done differently is switch to a web platform versus a mobile app. A few years earlier, we could have done that. But in the software business, if you develop an app and anyone who's done this knows it's time consuming and frustrating sometimes to have to work through Google Play and itunes to get approvals constantly, because you're always evolving.
When you own your own platform, which we eventually invested in 2000, it gives you so much more flexibility and control to, you know, to sort of own the experience and own the timing of your own updates.
So that's something we could have done earlier.
We probably could have done it in 2018 or 2019, but I'm glad we eventually did it. And it was a big, you know, it was a big step. But yeah, I think just as we've evolved, realizing that, you know, taking action sooner rather than later, it's always a good idea. I just can't think of any example where. Where that did not serve us. And as the velocity of change just continues to increase, I think it's more and more true.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah, but I like what you said at the beginning, like, the mode of, like, not living with any regrets, because I'm with you on that. Yeah. We live and we learn. We're gonna suck at things. We're gonna do things, something that we should have not done. But that's how you learn in the end here.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Exactly. And that's how you gain wisdom and experience. And it's just, you know, part of life.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: It is what it is, to put it simply. But I'd love to dive more into, like, look, look. So for people who aren't, like, very familiar with, like, how consumer insight research, like, works in practice, I'd love to, like, better understand when a brand comes to you guys, what does that process look like from them? Like, hey, like, we have a question. Like, we're trying to understand more our customers to, like, hey, like, we know exactly, like, who our Consumers are what they're looking for and just have a better like brand, like Persona, like idea of like what's going on with the customers.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
So currently we are based, we're in a consulting model and just as you described, clients come to us with very specific things they want to learn.
We are evolving away from that actually toward more use of cultivated communities for a broader use of things. But to answer your question, you know, there still is a lot that is broken in the world of market research. Anyone who works in the field knows what I'm talking about. And, and a lot of that is because, you know, with the growth of AI and just the saturation of being contacted relentlessly by, you know, customer relationship management emails, it's harder to reach out and cold call and get any response from anyone.
So there are still a lot of outdated methodologies being used. It floors me actually that people are still doing focus groups, you know, where you are asking people to drive to a strip mall in a suburb and sit with strangers. I mean, everyone is so busy and over scheduled now that I think the quality of people you get in those situations is not that useful and it's not that representative of users of IT of any brand or category. So.
So I think. And also the panels that are used, I don't mind calling out names like Dianetta, are just a little suspect because they're not vetted. So our whole approach is to develop relationships with real people.
And that as AI saturates, our world, has become more and more valuable and it's helped us build a high level of trust with our repeat clients, clients, particularly in the luxury world, because we're really very unique in that space. We've done the hard work of identifying those people and engendering their trust. So in a sense, we have two sets of clients. We have the clients that pay us for projects and come to us with questions that they need resolved. And then we also have a client base of tens of thousands of real people that vary from luxury buyers to a lot of college students to moms. I mean, we have all these kind of subgroups that we can reach and activate really quickly because we have experience having done studies with them in the past.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think it's very interesting because if I'm thinking about like, hey, we want to gather as much data as possible, like I'm going to be thinking of a survey, someone fills out a form, then we're going to use that data. It sounds like the most simple, simplistic approach to doing it, but you have A more like unique approach to doing it. I mean, I think I recall you mentioned you were like approaching women at like the Barney's bar. Like what was it? It was like a bar or something like that. I don't recall exactly what it was,
[00:08:15] Speaker A: but I thought that was the way it started.
It is unbelievably funny when I think about it. So Barney's doesn't even exist anymore. It used to be like the best high end department store in New York City. And unfortunately, you know, it got killed by private equity assembly. Good institutions do.
But years ago it used to be like that was the place where really wealthy people shopped. And so at the time I had a woman named Susan who did all of our recruiting. And we were getting asked by some French luxury houses to find women who had find jewelry and watches at a certain price point. It was really tough. And this was early kind of in our evolution toward a luxury based insights firm. And so Susan and I went to Fred's, which was the great restaurant on the fifth floor of Barney's, and we sat at the bar. And Susan had a sixth sense for who had money. And I didn't really at the time. I've gotten a little better, but I'm from the Midwest and I didn't grow up with that. But I can talk to anybody and I will talk to anybody. So she would kind of bird dog me. She'd like, go talk to that person, go talk to that person. And I would approach them and tell them about the study and they're like, sure. And I'd give them my card. And that is literally how we started. I mean, we moved on to other departments. We went to Bergdorf Goodman shoe department. We found people there and that it's like if you make sourdough bread, you know, and you have to work with starter yeast and you have to create your own starter yeast. That was our starter yeast. And it's amazing, you know, that it started on such a grassroots level, but it sort of speaks to the quality of the network that we have today. Because we've never bought a list.
We only work on personal referral and it's often through.
It's mostly through personal contact. So, you know, if Susan would go to Aspen, she would find people there. And if I'd visit la, I'd find people there. And as soon as we kind of reached a critical mass, mostly women, but some men, they would have a good experience with us. We pay them real money, like good money.
And they'd want to do more studies because Luxury buyers are not used to being asked for their opinions. I mean, they may get a Medallia survey like everybody else, but they usually ignore it.
And so it's actually, they find it really cool to engage in what feels like a very direct way for them to have input with some of the brands that they love, you know, on topics that they're passionate about. So we're not really doing studies on, you know, laundry detergent or pharmaceutical, you know, products.
Nothing against that, but we are studying fine jewelry and watches and beauty and skin care and fashion and automotive and, you know, increasingly wellness and supplements and, and topics that, that people really do want to feel heard on. You know, hospitality, that kind of thing.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah, and I feel like the story that you mentioned sounds like the, the original, like startup stories where like the big companies. I mean, I wouldn't growth hacking, but it's like very like a unique approach, like doing things. I don't remember exactly what it was. I think it was maybe like Bumble or Saw when it launched, like originally. I remember apparently they were putting like posters. They would put like all the social media and they would say, no social media or something. And then it was Bumble. And everyone was like, what is Bumble? It's like a unique approach, like growing. It sounds like you guys are doing not exactly the same thing, but it works.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: Probably something that a founder would do because, you know, no one else. You couldn't pay someone to do, you know, what we did. But we were really, really determined and it was actually fun. And, you know, to this day, I would, I would, I would enjoy probably, you know, perusing the shoe department of Bergdorf Goodman to find more people, but we don't have to because we have, like, people knocking on our door wanting to be part of our studies. So it's. It's great to be harvesting that 10 years on.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And just going back to the people, because that was one thing I wanted to touch on. Because a lot of people, they think about luxury and they're like, okay, luxury. It's like wealthy people, but people that have a lot of money. But in some cases, what's kind of like the reality, what brands are getting, not what brands, but what are brands getting wrong about who those luxury customers are? Because it sounds like it's not always what they think.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really undergoing a sea change right now. So, like, versus five years ago, a lot of the traditional luxury houses were on a roll. You know, all of the houses within lvmh, for example, you know, Dior and Bulgari and Louis Vuitton is a great example.
You know, the bigger the logo, the better. You know, Gucci was still pretty much on fire at that point.
A lot of those brands are suffering today because, you know, for a few reasons. But I think part of it is younger people don't necessarily want to have those logos displayed on their product and on their clothing. And they are.
They're a little more proud if they've discovered a luxury brand by themselves that may not have the same price tag, but has where the quality is just as high. You know, so that. That's one sea change that's happening with young, you know, very recently, very recently, like, the price of Hermes handbags has started to come down, which is kind of unthinkable because There were articles 10 years ago, eight years ago that said, you know, they're only going up. It's a better investment than the stock market, et cetera, et cetera. And we have many women in our network that have closets full of Kelly's and Birkin bags.
I don't know if that's a blip, but I don't think it is because I think, you know, the European luxury house model of luxury is very mature, and I think something else is coming. You know, I won't take up this podcast talking about trend forecasting, but, you know, if anyone dialed into our social platforms is going to learn a lot about that, because it is currently that nut is cracking, that world is cracking, and it's exploding into something very exciting, I think. And. And there's a democratization and a globalization. There are now interesting luxury brands coming out of China, and there will be coming out of, you know, countries like India and Nigeria, and it's not going to be dominated by Europe anymore.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And touching on to, like, China because there's a lot of, like, I'm not sure if I would say misconception, but they like a myth about understanding where, like, China is one of, like, the most important, probably most misunderstood lux in the world for, like, a Western brand. Like, they're just trying to get a real, like, read on, like, what's going on there. What are some, like, the blind spots that they tend to have and how should they be thinking about approaching that market differently? Because it's obviously a little bit different compared to, like, Europe or North America or anything like that.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Yeah, China is fascinating. You know, I've been there multiple times, and we actually invested in building a WeChat mini program so that we could reach luxury buyers there because, you know, because of the great firewall, other digital apps don't work there. I mean, there's lag times and Chinese people in general, but certainly luxury buyers have no patience for that. I mean, China speed is something. I mean, they are very impatient, rightly so, because they have amazing technology that allows them to have food delivered within, you know, groceries delivered within an hour, you know, or less.
It beats DoorDash and Instacart and anything we have.
So the WeChat mini program allows us to. It's integrated into our software and it allows us to talk with them at the speed and in the medium that they're used to, chatting with their friends. So that's really important. And it gives us a periscope into China that no one else has.
So most research companies are actually still doing in person focus groups. It's amazing.
It's just an amazing waste of money because we can do it so much more affordably and we can get better people. I mean, I literally, you know, tapped into luxury programs that were filled with Chinese, crazy rich, Asian, you know, Chinese people. And that's how I filled our, what I call our luxury verse in China. You know, that they are real, like, they are the real deal at all different ages. And they love. I love doing studies in China because they're so expressive and open and sophisticated and knowledgeable about luxury.
And that evolution has happened so quickly.
And now the changes that are happening in China, you know, what's really hit the luxury houses hard is the aspiration, what's called sort of the aspirational luxury buyer in the second tier cities, for example, or even within tier one cities in China that, you know, may not be finding full employment because their economy's getting crushed for various reasons. That could be another whole podcast. But, you know, the very rich in China are still spending, so the very high luxury brands are maintaining.
But anything aspirational and even aspirational categories like beauty and skincare are suffering there a lot because many, many companies turned from the west to China and now they're paying for that change of focus, that proportion of focus.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And there's, like, been a lot of conversation, like the research space, somewhat more about, like, the delimitation, like the traditional method. So like the focus group, the surveys, like that kind of thing. I'd love to, like, understand because I know we touch a little bit onto it, but I'd love to understand what kind of breaks down those approaches and what does a. More like a modern, like, reliable way of gathering insights actually look like, because I know you mentioned you guys have obviously built a good network. You guys have people just like coming to you directly, which is obviously very helpful. But in just in like general practice, if you don't have like all that network like coming to you, like what does that kind of look like? If you were to go back to the roots of going in like the other Barneys and everything like that, is there like a different approach that you would be taking or what do you think?
[00:19:30] Speaker A: I think having done it the hard way, I'm just so grateful we did because I think no one is or has been crazy enough to approach it the way that we did.
And it's just, it's really paid off in an unexpected way because you know, companies like Qualtrics and Medallia that force out surveys and you know, they call themselves customer experience programs. It's not an experience, you know, to receive an email that looks really boring and just has closed end questions and you know, that's not a customer experience.
What we offer is a one on one intimate chat on our platform. So it's in a digital space, but it's in a digital space that people are used to because of texting. And that's what it feels like. It feels like you're texting back and forth with a friend.
So we introduce ourselves at the beginning of the chat and we, we hang on their every word and it's, it's. Sometimes we'll have closed end questions and we do a limited amount of quantitative research, but mostly we do qualitative or hybrid qual quant where there is definitely a human presence that is a part of the interaction and it's a uniquely captive audience, especially in these luxury environments that luxury brands can't get this anywhere else. I mean advertising is kind of the new tobacco or the new refined sugar. Like people are high net worth. People are navigating their way around it.
And so this immersive experience of being engaged in a conversation with someone over a period of we give them four or five days to finish. It doesn't take four to five days of work. We never exhaust them. It's more like one hour of their time. But they can do a little bit here, a little bit there. Because that's the only thing that works for busy people, is to have it in digestible bites. So that. But it's a captive experience that's non commercialized.
There will never be any ads.
And we have two ways of talking to people in a group chat or one on one. And either way is curated, invite only.
And it's a chance for the brands to really have people focus on what they have to say. So there's two kind of magical things happening. One is these people are getting to feel heard and they're not. That's new for them. That's really new for them. It's very different than being sent to Medallia survey.
The other thing is that they're focusing on your brand in a way that is deep and kind of, you know, it's not customer acquisition that's different. That's if you're shopping for a hotel on Expedia, you got, you know, paid search results. This is awakening dormant desire. It's awakening dormant interest and often desire for a brand that maybe they just haven't thought about for a while, but now they're feeling invested in it because someone's caring enough to pay them for their opinions and they're getting to see media or what we upload media, commercials, images, positioning, statements, all kinds of things.
Just as often we'll ask them to upload media. That's often a part of our studies. But the point is it's like a storytelling context that just doesn't exist anywhere else.
And honestly, that's the pivot we're now making because we noticed that after people engage in a Tiffany study, 10 of 80 people will go out and buy fine jewelry from Tiffany.
That's an enormous dividend. But the research department is not talking to the customer acquisition or media department and they're not talking to the PR events department. So it's just they're siloed with the size of companies that we deal with. So we want to switch from being paid for insights and having this unrealized dividend of customer acquisition to a customer or potential prospect immersion experience. That's different than advertising. It's a whole different thing. And it will pay a dividend of insights.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And I feel like another way to look at it is I feel like those are pros and cons for brands. When they are looking at doing more of like a quality like approach to like collecting data as opposed to just like sending in like a survey. Because you're going to be, if you're doing it from a quality perspective, you're going to get a better output that's going to have you get better insights into like what your customers actually want. And then you can adapt that to resonate more with them, which is going to obviously grow the company. But if you go the opposite route, that can also hurt you too, because if you get bad data, you implement the Things that were not actually wanted by your actual consumers goes down. And I feel like not a lot of brands understand that and like taking it away. I'd love to hear maybe like two, three, like bullet points that you would have for any brands that are looking like, hey, we want to better understand our consumers, we want to take a very more quality approach and we just want to be more efficient overall when it comes to understanding your customers. Anything specific that you would recommend them doing?
[00:25:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a new approach and you know, we haven't even started to talk to our clients about this yet, but we're going to over the summer is creating that really elegant three part solve where you get media events and experiences and insights together and you construct an experience that will yield benefits for all three of those departments.
And that doesn't need to be limited to like a sample size of 30.
Our database is 30 tens of thousands. Like we can set up an ongoing panel that can still feel like it's very intimate or a group chat with 30 to 50 people. We could do that every day, every week. Like it could be an ongoing campaign.
And conservatively, conservatively, like I would say 10% of the people that are involved in a study with us go out and buy the product.
So that may not be effective for a consumer packaged goods brand, but it's definitely effective for a luxury company that may have customer acquisition costs of $1,000 or $1,500.
And again, this is not really customer acquisition as much as it is creation of desire which does lead to customer acquisition. But it's deeper than that. It really is.
It's deeper than that. I think it goes back to when in the 1950s and 60s and 70s, people were glued to their television and wouldn't actually watch the whole commercial.
And that was in the era of DDB and Mad Men when there was actual creativity involved in the creation of advertising. But now all we have is billions of dollars being thrown at digital in ways that we know from our research are not resonating.
And you know, one of the most important findings we've seen recently is that peer to peer, like literal word of mouth, which could be face to face or it could be on text, but with people that, you know, like that is the influence that matters now. And it has surpassed social media as a form of influence. It's very interesting to see how tribal we are becoming as a culture as a result of so much digital transformation and you know, including AI rising to the surface and becoming so quickly adopted it, it just, it really elevates the experience of human to human communication and recommendation and discovery.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Love it. Well, Melinda, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show because I've never had anyone like the the research side of things. And it was actually interesting when you mentioned that you're like creating that desire because I didn't think about that. But when you're getting people to share like how much they love a brand, like go more like in depth and like what they like, don't like, then it just makes you more like interested in wanting to go get their product. And I feel that's not something I've thought about and I think that's a very interesting angle. So I think you guys are definitely on the right path for that. And as far as like just getting in touch with you because I know you guys have that very quality approach. There's a lot of other panels etc that I mean it can't work but could hurt your brand. What's kind of the best way to get in touch with the energy active? You got your website, you got LinkedIn. You're in a couple places. But where's should people look for you here?
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Yeah, Infoooklook app.
So it's appnot.com or you can email me directly at Melinda with an A M A L I N D aoklook app. We're on.
We have one of our cultivated communities is called the luxuryverse and this is where we have people knocking on the door to be invited in. So we have the Luxuryverse 100 Instagram account. We have the Luxuryverse on Substack. We have the Luxuryverse 100 on TikTok.
My name, Melinda Sana is on LinkedIn. So any of those, we're not hard to find or get in touch with. So yeah, give us a follow. I think you'll find it fun. Perfect.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Well, we're going to put that in the show notes. So everyone head over to looklook app. If you want to reach out, get in touch with Melinda and to listeners if you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, like leave a review, comment, all that fun stuff and then until then, keep pushing and yeah, we'll see you in the next one.
