Voices: the CMB Blog

Originally posted on the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce blog

In January 2014, my colleagues from Chadwick Martin Bailey and I attended the Greater Boston Chamber’s Annual Pinnacle Awards. I was so inspired by the stories of success from the honorees and felt so proud that the president and CEO of my company, Anne Bailey Berman, had herself been a recipient of a Pinnacle Award back in 2007. While I went there to support the women in our community and hear about their journeys toward achieving their goals, I left with a new personal goal I was committed to working towards.You see, during the ceremony, a group of women were asked to stand up as the room applauded them. These women were members of the Chamber’s Women’s Leadership Program—women who were selected from a large pool of applicants who were given the chance to attend seminars, workshops, and networking events to grow their leadership skills. I wanted to be part of that group.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago – when I achieved that goal, sitting among the new Women’s Leadership class being recognized at the 2015 Pinnacle Awards. And once again, it was an incredibly inspiring event.

Using my experiences from the program, I examined the honorees’ speeches through a new lens. I listened to identify how the skills and tenets I had learned myself helped this amazing group of honorees achieve their success. Four great insights left a lasting mark in particular:

1). Embrace every opportunity that’s presented and don’t shy away from something that’s outside of your comfort zone. When Emily Rooney, Host and Executive Editor of Beat the Press, was interested in creating Beat the Press, she learned that Arianna Huffington wanted to pitch something similar with the same name. Emily wasn’t afraid to take a risk when the odds may have been against her, and she came out the victor.

2). It’s ok to be emotional and passionate. Deb Re, CEO of Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, said it best: “If something doesn’t make you emotional and passionate then it probably isn’t worth your time.” As women, showing emotion does not make us weak. We’re likely to produce better work when we care about what it is we are doing.

3). Having a good support system is just as important as having a good idea. All of the honorees had family and friends in the audience who helped them get to where they are today. I loved hearing the loud cheers from sections of colleagues who play a role in the honorees’ every day successes – and in turn, the honorees acknowledging the importance of these partnerships in their speeches.

4). Pay it forward. Many of the honorees were also members of volunteer committees. As we move up in the working world, it’s easy to succumb to the pressures of the job, but also important to make time to give back. This was illustrated best by honoree Cindy Laba, Founder and Head of School at Beacon Academy, when she made every person in the audience take out his/her cell phone and say hello to someone who means a lot to them.

I was so inspired by these amazing stories of success and look forward to attending the Pinnacle Awards in the years to come.

The Chamber has created so many opportunities for women in the Boston business community and continues to serve as a support system by helping women in our community achieve their goals. It’s an honor to be part of that.

Caitlin Dailey is a Project Manager for Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB). CMB is a Boston-based Gold Top 50 market research and consulting firm, partnering with a select group of the world’s leading brands to deliver critical insights for confident, strategic decision-making. 

CMB is a great place to work for both genders, but, as a woman, I’d like to give you my perspective. Having recently attended the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s annual Pinnacle Awards, a luncheon celebrating women leaders in the Boston community, I started to reflect on my own journey in the workforce. The eight women receiving awards that afternoon all had such inspiring stories, most facing some form of adversity, to become leaders in their field and contributors to the Boston community. Fortunately for me, CMB has given me many opportunities to grow and develop professionally, perhaps due in part to the fact that it is a woman-led company. Our President and CEO, Anne Bailey Berman, was herself a recipient of a Pinnacle Award back in 2007 for achievement in entrepreneurship, and CMB was named one of the top women-led businesses in Boston this past year.I joined CMB straight out of college nearly 5 years ago, starting out as an associate researcher. My first impression was that CMB’s culture was an open one in which collaboration between senior and entry-level staff was not only encouraged but considered a critical part of a project’s success. However, you’re not just thrown to the wolves. CMB has a great training program for new associates, teaching all facets of project execution through classroom-setting sessions and on-the-job training through project mentorship from senior associates. There are clear paths for promotion and growth and development opportunities for all levels in weekly “CMB University” sessions. Anne is always telling us to “ask for forgiveness, not permission.” We’re encouraged to have our own voice and contribute strategic thinking from the outset, and after only 3 years, I was promoted from associate to senior associate to project manager.

As a project manager, I have faced new challenges in finding the managing style that works best for me, particularly as a woman. Thanks to Anne’s involvement in the Boston business community as well as her recognition of the importance of the role of women in leadership, I have been presented with examples of strong management and opportunities to attend events that help me find the style that works best for me.

As a group, the women of CMB attend networking breakfasts and co-host WIRE (Women In Research) events. The best opportunity I’ve received so far is being accepted to the Boston Chamber Women’s Leadership Program, which allows me to attend events, seminars, and lectures to learn from my peers and other women leaders in our community. Just this week, our Senior Marketing Manager, Stephanie Kimball, was accepted to Boston’s Future Leaders Program.

So ladies (and gents), if you’re interested in a career in market research, I encourage you to apply here. We have smart people, do important work for world-leading brands, and give back to the community through fundraising and volunteering. There is a true sense of comradery between colleagues here. CMB’s not just a stop along the way, but a place where you can grow your career. This is a place where producing exceptional work is the attainable expectation and every day is a new learning experience.

For key takeaways from this year’s Pinnacle Awards, visit http://bostonchamber.com/lessons-in-leadership-for-greater-boston-women/.

Caitlin Dailey is a Project Manager for the Travel/Entertainment/Finance/Healthcare/Insurance practice. Outside of work, she is a company dancer with DanceWorks Boston.

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Eight years is a long time to be in a relationship with someone. When you’ve been with the same person for that long, chances are you either put a ring on it, or throw in the towel. If you have a solid foundation, an even balance of give and take, and you genuinely enjoy each other’s company, how do you go about keeping that spark alive, rather than just going through the motions? The answer: you get creative and find ways to surprise and delight your partner. The same is true for tracking studies; if you have a strong partnership and you want it to last, you want to find ways to surprise and delight your client rather than letting your tracker go stale.  For the past eight years, CMB has been working with a global cruise line on their guest satisfaction study, delivering quarterly reports each year (that’s 32 reports in case you’re rusty with your times tables). I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of this team for nearly half that time, and I’ve learned a few things about adding that "special something" to keep things fresh in the relationship.  

One of the ways we keep our trackers fresh, compelling, and above all useful, is with “Special Chapters.”  For our cruise client we deliver these Special Chapters—mini-reports on hot topics, in addition to the typical brand tracking slides. We work with our client each quarter to decide on the topics of interest at that point in time, or we find new stories in the vast amount of data we have from our questionnaire. To make them truly "special," we have to get creative, so we look to other sources of data rather than just our single study to pull in what customers are saying on social media and review sites like cruisecritic.com, and we work with our client’s database team to append customer information to our data in order to run more in-depth analyses.

Here are a few other ways we help keep trackers fresh:

Provide a snapshot on a new product or service

• In the case of our cruise client, over the tenure of the study, two new ships were introduced in the fleet, so we created a chapter detailing each ship's performance during their inaugural years

Deep dive into a particular segment of customers

• Our cruise client, like many of our clients, is a global company, giving us the opportunity to look into differences between many types of customer groups, for example:

§  Country profile scorecards on guests from different regions

§  Customer journey maps on guests with different levels of experience with the brand

Compare pre- and post-data surrounding key company initiatives

• Based on recommendations we may have given in a previous quarter, our client makes necessary adjustments to improve guests’ experiences onboard, and we have the ability to compare pre- and post-data to determine whether these adjustments have improved their perceptions.

 …and that’s just to name a few.

Don’t let the monotony of a brand tracker make your relationship go stale. Get creative, surprise and delight, and you’ll be walking hand-in-hand into the future for many more years to come.

Caitlin Dailey is a Project Manager for the Retail/Travel/Entertainment/Finance/Healthcare/Insurance practice. Outside of work she is a company dancer with DanceWorks Boston.

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By Caitlin Dailey

A warning to all the college seniors thinking about a career in market research: becoming a market researcher is both a blessing and a curse. Since I began working at CMB, I can’t turn away from a questionnaire or a good read on survey statistics, and having a group of classmates and friends with the same background just adds fuel to the fire. Whenever we come across an interesting study, we just have to share it.

One study came into my inbox just 3 days ago. This particular study was about “what singles want.” I found this particularly interesting given that I’m a single “twenty-something” living in a city with a relatively large number of unmarried women. According to the “what singles want” study of over 5,000 unattached adults 21+, “54% would not date someone with substantial student loan debt.” In a world where a college degree is the norm and post-grad education is increasingly becoming a requirement, I find this statistic hard to swallow. When I first decided to attend Bentley University, I remember standing around in a friend’s kitchen senior year of high school. His mother asked the group of us what colleges we had decided on, and when I said Bentley, she responded (jokingly), “good luck finding a husband with all of those student loans you’re going to have.” This has become a running joke between us.  Now that there is a statistic to back it up, the joke has turned into a reality.

And the good news just keeps on coming: “49% would consider getting into a committed relationship with someone who lived at home with parents.” I guess if I still lived at home my student loans would be less of an issue. Call me crazy, but something about living at home and being in a relationship just doesn’t add up. And let’s not neglect to mention the affect that social media has on the dating scene. “38% [of respondents] would cancel a date because of something they found while doing internet research on their date”. So your relationship could be doomed before you even get the chance to meet someone in person. And yet, finding partners online is becoming more and more common. Is your head spinning? Mine is.

So being a market researcher is both a blessing and a curse. I too easily get roped into reading all of these articles that make me contemplate life, and question whether I am in the norm or if I even want to be in the norm, but I also get to learn about market trends and answer real business questions for great clients. My head might be spinning with numbers and statistics, but it certainly makes life interesting.

Caitlin is a senior associate researcher for the Retail/Travel/Entertainment practice. Outside of work she is a company dancer with DanceWorks Boston, and continues her search for ‘Mr. Right’ despite her substantial student loan debt.

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