If you missed IIEX last week, no worries. Here are our 5 short takes.

#1 Drinking the AI punch; still eating the human sandwich

No surprise, AI tooling and talk was everywhere. Two things stood out.

  • Try, Try, Try. At Samsung, Florian Bauer’s challenge was to develop and launch the Galaxy Smart Ring without a marketing team, only using their in-house AI model. The outcome? Well, after launch the marketing team was still there, but now much wiser on how to integrate AI into the product development cycle.

“Experimentation beats the business case – the more I read the more I get the idea AI strategy is all about business cases – I think we should answer a different question – what will it cost if we don’t do this / invest now?” – Florian B., Samsung

  • Humans, humans, humans. If we got $5 for each time a speaker said “we still need people” we’d be rolling in dough. Whether it was Florian at Samsung who stressed the human role in AI platform design, integration and deployment, or Heineken and Haystack showing that synthetic audiences can’t match real-world insight, one thing stood out: AI speeds up innovation, but the real power comes when paired with expert judgment and real human engagement.

#2 Be the outdoor cat.

While the AI tsunami propels us forward, it was actually one of the oldest tricks in the book that took center stage:: observing people. A few examples…

  • Risham Nadeem, Innovation Director at C Space introduced the “outdoor cat” analogy, sharing how C Space’s panel communities enable Philips innovation to observe people using new products in home, even on sensitive topics.
  • NailBiters, showed off their nifty video metrics tooling with Coty. We watched how young women interacted with the Rimmel beauty bar in-store, perusing, testing and trying on mascara, lipstick and blushes. This informed the re-design of their beauty bar.
  • When you just can’t get out, Ricky Shah from Unilever had an answer…

“Get out from behind your desk and watch TikTok – customers broadcast behaviour all the time.” – Ricky S., Unilever

#3 RIP concept boards and Likert scales

Boy, did old-fashioned quant testing take a beating at IIEX. Apparently, the days of dry surveys and rigid scales are behind us. The future is conversation, observation (and AI, duh).

  • Again, Ricky Shah at Unilever summed it up nicely:

“No one looks at a skin care cream in a concept and says ‘my purchase intent is a 4 or 5’. When you’re in a department store at the Chanel counter, you have the pack in your hand and something in you says you have to have this – you are DRAWN to it and you buy it. No concept board can capture this.”

  • Lysol used conversational research tool Protobrand to refresh their brand positioning – consumers shared stories through images and visual collages, rather than just ticking boxes on a scale. This human-centered approach so beat the Likert scale in terms of insights, they just buried the scale in front of our eyes.

#4 More stories, more narratives

There’s AI data, tracking data, CRM data. But where’s the beef?

In real, human interactions. Teams who see and hear the human voice behind the data can transform it into a story on what matters. This motivates teams on the inside to make the hard changes consumers would be delighted to see on the outside.

A few stories on stories:

  • FrieslandCampina used Try&Tell’s video diaries of people testing one of their products revealed deep emotions, and captured subtle, nonverbal cues that written feedback often misses.
  • PepsiCo, faced with declining Christmas sales, realised that using Every Rung’s story telling solution to turn complex data into clear, emotionally-driven stories could help reconnect with their consumers.
  • 5hellos agile online group conversations build a powerful consumer story to show what’s going on, making for sharper internal decision-making.

#5 The Zeitgeist in 2025

The final hot take? Change, change, change.

We’re marching towards a new era in research, one where insights are fuelled by human interactions and observations, robust data and AI tooling to create holistic, powerfulhuman-centered narratives.

At 5hellos, we love being part of this, bringing a fresh, new energy to power projects with rich, group conversations between real people.

To close with … a lovely line from Salma Nosseir at Henkel that kicked off the IIEX!

“Viscous soaps are in some markets a signal of quality, but in other markets they’re a hassle to use. Our product tech person must be able to live this themselves so they can translate that inconvenience into the right chemical. No report can do that.”