Editor’s Observe: The next interview includes a GreenBook Future Listing honoree, Marlena Mattei. The GreenBook Future Listing acknowledges management, skilled development, private integrity, ardour, and excellence within the subsequent technology of shopper insights and advertising and marketing professionals inside the first 10 years of their careers.
Introducing Marlena Mattei of Pearson
Marlena Mattei is College of Pennsylvania graduate and a Client & Cultural Insights Senior Strategist at Pearson. She is captivated with rising the group and dealing to bolster the trade by mentorship and thought management. She has incessantly developed revolutionary and inventive methodologies, instruments, and analyses and introduced them at trade occasions together with the QRCA and Insights Affiliation. She is presently engaged on creating a framework to raised perceive the relationships between advanced 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 whole HUMAN — together with cultural and environmental forces shaping their experiences, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. She fuses creativity and analytical considering, permitting her to develop revolutionary 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 might shock folks to know?
I began doing analysis once I was a cultural anthropology scholar on the College of Pennsylvania. My curiosity in public life and utilizing commentary as a analysis software led me to work on some… unconventional tasks. I as soon as volunteered at a up to date artwork museum the place I acquired to be a part of the exhibit – observing folks observing me. Throughout one other challenge, I spent a complete summer season on the Philadelphia Zoo – watching folks watching animals. You’ll find my contributions in my professor’s e-book, American Zoo. Each of those tasks have been such distinctive and enjoyable “meta” experiences. I really feel fortunate to have labored on them, and they’re undoubtedly conversation-starters. And yet another enjoyable reality – I haven’t visited a zoo since that challenge!
What are three abilities you consider to be essential to achieve market analysis and why?
Past foundational abilities like analytical considering and emotional intelligence, I’ve discovered that probably the most profitable insights professionals are likely to excel in a number of extra nuanced areas:
- The willingness to query your personal assumptions: That is so essential in our work; it permits us to be extra empathetic, artistic, and revolutionary. It challenges us to assume past what’s and begin to think about what may very well be.
- The flexibility to establish and talk probably the most vital insights: I persistently 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 information they encounter. It’s essential to not simply know the best way to accumulate and current knowledge, but additionally the best way to join an important elements to a corporation’s objectives and the best way to talk it successfully, so it doesn’t get misplaced within the sea of knowledge. Storytelling is a good talent to hone for this.
- The flexibility to forecast and plan for the longer term: With the ability to assume past the current and provides strategic suggestions primarily based on probably future situations is turning into more and more essential. This requires a deep understanding of rising cultural shifts so as to assist anticipate how the panorama will evolve and what a corporation must be ready for. And even inside our personal analysis and insights trade, 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 group or your clients?
Advocating for folks is certainly one of my priorities and carefully aligns with my values, so I’m fortunate to work in an trade the place it’s so pure to do that since our toolbox is absolutely well-equipped for it. We use knowledge which may reduce by bias to assist folks 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 want? 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 folks I work with – understanding their experiences, objectives, and challenges permits me to raised advocate for them and champion their work.
