How did you get there? Craig Smith

Great to hear from Craig Smith who is the head of market research at TIAA. Craig has spent his 20-year career focused on market research, specializing in the measurement of brand health and marketing effectiveness while holding brand advertiser, media agency, and vendor roles. He has experienced working with various types of measurement approaches, including audience segmentation, brand equity tracking, brand lift, campaign reporting, copy testing, marketing mix modelling, and multi-touch attribution. 

My big break was landing a summer internship at a start-up where I enjoyed the work and the people, which turned into a full-time position upon graduation from college. Within a couple years of joining the start-up, it was acquired by Nielsen, a global market research firm, presenting an amazing opportunity to get exposure to various types of measurement. After nearly 15 years on the vendor side, I was able to translate that experience to different types of companies, including Universal McCann (media agency), LiveRamp (martech), and TIAA (financial services). Each step has benefited from the experience gained at the previous stop, with market research being a highly transferable skill. 

It’s a great place for people who are at the intersection of having a passion for marketing and an analytical mind. With an end goal of market research being to determine what causes consumers to behave the way that they do, what I find to be fun is getting to be part philosopher and part detective in pondering why things may be happening and digging into the situation to unearth the truth. If this appeals to you then market research can be a great place to spend a career. 

It was an unexpected moment while at Nielsen to learn that my department was being sold to another company. I had a great team, and we were doing great work, so I was bummed out by the news. A silver lining of the experience is that it shook me from my comfort zone and forced me to seriously think about directions to take my career after spending eight years prior doing similar work. This resulted in taking on tremendous new learning opportunities with totally different types of companies, increasing my industry perspective in a way that wasn’t previously possible. 

There are many things that I would say to focus on, but two that I’ll mention here are to proactively manage your career and to take care to build meaningful relationships. 

It’s on you to manage your career, ensuring that you are constantly learning and growing, gaining expertise in what you are doing at a given time but balanced with gaining diverse experiences to achieve a more holistic perspective. Without that diversification it can be easy to get pigeonholed, limiting future opportunities. On the point of diversification, be open to interesting and unexpected opportunities when they come your way, even if they don’t fit the path that you had envisioned. 

As to building meaningful relationships, seek out others who you can learn from and appreciate those who you enjoy working with. Keep up with these people over time to stay knowledgeable about what is happening in the industry, checking how you can be of help, and to find opportunities to work together once again. The journey is easier and more rewarding when going it with others

My memo for the sector is that AI is inevitable. It is staggering to see how sophisticated ChatGPT already is at being a research assistant, for example at generating thoughtful first passes at questionnaires with subject matter expertise infused from internet research. I urge both new and experienced researchers to invest in learning how to utilize AI and experiment with its use cases. Try your hand at something innovative like developing synthetic respondents. AI is here to stay and those who resist it risk being left behind. 

There are so many people who have supported my journey, but to name a few, I’ll start with two of my marketing professors from the University of Connecticut, Bill Ryan and Jayanthi Rajan. Beyond being fantastic teachers, they went above and beyond for me, with the former setting me up with the aforementioned internship that springboarded my career and the latter who selflessly added an elective component to a course so that I could graduate on time. I’ve been grateful to keep in touch with these two over the years.

Also, a shout out to my friend and current manager, Tara Connington-Murphy, who has been a trailblazer in the marketing analytics industry and who I have been fortunate to work with on multiple occasions, helping to open doors along the way. Refer back to the point about building meaningful relationships based on good work, reliability, and trust – they are essential to a successful career in this field. 

Related