Vibe Coding And The 'Platformification' Of Market Insights

Forbes

6 days ago

Vibe coding for faster, deeper consumer insights
Vibe coding is a software development approach that uses AI, particularly (LLMs), to generate and refine code based on high-level NL instructions, saving a massive amount of manpower and time vs. manual coding. It enables non-coders to easily and accessibly achieve desired outcomes by letting AI handle the technical aspects of the development process. 'Platformification', my favorite new term this year which I'm seeing across many contexts, involves consolidating platforms, data, analysis and suppliers to achieve end to end insights and solutions, making information access and analysis across databases, departments and geographies far easier, faster and more cost-effective.
In the past 5 months since the term vibe coding was coined, the concept has transformed software development lifecycles and it has jumped to an entirely different space: market insights. To understand more, I spoke with Discuss, a market insights platform I'd been hearing about from friends at CPG companies because it is at the forefront of the transformation to AI solutions spanning a broad spectrum of marketing research activities. Discuss takes a vibe coding approach to make it easier for non-researchers to gain in-depth human understanding of their consumers. The company accomplishes this by enabling users to tell AI agents who you want to talk to and what you want to ask them. AI handles the rest. To quote Adam Mertz, Chief Growth Officer at Discuss, 'marketing research has progressed more in the past 2 years, than in the previous 20 years'.
Vibe coding marketing research has many advantages for gaining better insights for clients across sectors. One of the most important is that it enables anyone without a research background to look beyond what people do and buy in order to understanding why they engage in certain actions and make certain purchases. It also enables anyone to tap into the psychology of their audience in just hours instead of weeks or even months.
Their agentic approach involves a myriad of different market insights tasks, from helping to create interview discussion guides, to recruiting interviewees and coordinating project logistics, to conducting interviews, translating interviews into multiple languages, extracting insights, capturing quotes and relevant videoclips, to creating reports and presentations.
Advantages of vibe coding market insights include:
AI interviewers are very conversational. They remember prior questions and answers, understand context, and can improvise relevant questions on the fly based on prior question responses from interviewees. Remarkably, it understands when interviewees pause because they are thinking. It's patient and interested in all they say to get at the why of their product preferences and behaviors. Clients can select moderator styles such as a more business-like vs. a more casual style and tone, or a British accent vs. an American accent.
Other benefits and capabilities include:
To quote Georgina Farmer, Insights and Customer Experience Leader at the healthcare company Dexcom, 'The ability to translate the consumer interviews and insight summaries we conduct with Discuss so all our offices around the world can hear them in real time, is a game changer. The ability to easily extract themes across many key databases, is a monumental time saver, and the accuracy of the insights has been impressive.'
Humans are still better for certain types of insights. As Maria Rydzewski, Principal at Mastercard Data & Services shared, "for all the benefits of AI, nothing will replace human-to-human connection. Discuss is the only market insights platform we've found that offers both AI and human-moderated research. Their AI moderation is a great tool in our toolkit. When we're talking about something sensitive like people paying bills or financial stress, traditional human-led research is probably still going to be a better approach. But if it's message testing or product feedback, AI is great for scale, speed, and efficiency.'
Take-Aways For CMO's
Things are moving incredibly fast in transforming marketing research processes, in large part due to AI advances. There's a massive risk of firms being left behind if they aren't yet experimenting with GenAI market insights vibe coding. Since the cost savings can be enormous, more consumer questions can be explored and answered, the complexity of synthesizing multiple databases greatly simplified, and the time and manpower involved significantly reduced, there's no reason not to get started.