IIeX NA 2019 Conference Series – Steve Mast – Methodify

Happy Market Research Podcast

Welcome to the 2019 IIEX North America Conference Series. Recorded live in Austin, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Steve Mast, one of the Founders of Methodify.

Contact Steve Online:

LinkedIn

Methodify

[00:00]

Steve Mast with Methodify. These guys are just crushing it. They were the best exhibitors at the event, maybe even at any event I’ve ever attended. A lot of things that were clever. My favorite was... They had these little stickers, which basically were fill-in-the-blanks. “This blank has been certified by Methodify.” And they would write in what it was. So like, “This water cooler or this cup or this microphone or this coffee pot or this person’s back or whatever...” It was really funny, created a lot of buzz. Also, it drove my good friend, Matt Gershner, and other GreenBook pros crazy, but, having said that, the entertainment value was huge. Enjoy the episode.

[00:48]

I have Steve Mast, the founder and CEO?

[00:51]

One of the founders of Methodify, yes.

[00:54]

Methodify. Yep, that’s right. So, we’re at IIeX in Austin. You guys have been here before.

[00:58]

Yes, we have, yes. First year, we’ve actually done a full activation: the booth, speaking, all those kinds of things, so...

[01:04]

And you’ve been testing everything according to...

[01:07]

We’ve been testing the water coolers, the food stations. Yeah, everything’s been Methodified.

[01:13]

I love “This has been Methodified.” You know that’s an interesting kind of... OK, so, talk to me a little bit about that.

[01:21]

So, where that actually came out of ‘cause we actually have registered Methodify IT. So, we’re not an Italian company; we’re actually born out of Canada, right, but Methodify is a global platform. But the “Methodify it” came out of our clients literally saying, “We want to Methodify it” or “Was that piece of creative or was that new product, was it Methodified?” So that’s where we actually came up with the whole “Methodify it.” So, it was our clients. So literally we’re listening to our customers, and we’re applying what they’re saying to our marketing and various...

[01:53]

Isn’t that the best proof of concept? You know you can have this thing like founder-market fit where you have a personalized need, and you recognize it in the marketplace. “Oh, good, I can solve that need.” But when the market actually starts changing language around your product and your solution, that’s a nice confirmation.

[02:13]

Yeah, I think it was interesting because (I don’t know what your feeling is but...) we’re obviously Methodify is research automation. Like that’s the space it’s playing in. But I think what’s interesting is the last couple of years everybody’s been, “Yeah, we’re kicking the tires; we’re checking it out; we’re trying things; we’re piloting programs.” This year I feel a substantial change in that where people are not kicking the tires. Now it’s about “How and when do we implement this?” “Where does it fit within the ecosystem of our market research tools, platforms?” So I think the whole industry has changed. The other big thing too is (and I think you may have talked about it in other episodes as well) is when you look at the martech industry, right, it’s very mature obviously, but if you look at the research space, now we have this huge rise of research technologies. And I think the big thing that has to happen is those two industries have to start to move closer together and start embedding research tech inside of martech. So very often, we’ve had some of our clients, if you think of their marketing-operations process, instead of it being a separate thing over somewhere else where you have research basically living on a data lake or living on some other knowledge platform inte...