Brian and Andrew sit down with Dr. Abdullah Al Bahrani, an economics professor, founder of Decode Econ, and associate dean at Northern Kentucky University’s Hale College of Business. The question that started it all came from their CEO peer group: why does the economy feel so strange right now? Dr. Abdullah breaks down policy uncertainty, a low-hire, low-fire job market, consumers who feel broke but keep spending, and why he calls AI a bubble even though he is a big believer in the technology.

Then they bring it home to market research. What happens when venture-backed AI firms collide with slow-growth, research-led companies? Abdullah’s answer: compete on price and you end up in zero-profit land, so the real moats are data quality, human respondents, and a human voice.

Key Takeaways:

• The economy feels weird because of uncertainty: people feel bad but keep spending, and businesses are holding off on hiring

• AI is a real productivity gain but also a bubble, and it is not what is costing people jobs, just a convenient explanation for a frozen market

• Speed and polish will lose to value, so market research firms should compete on data quality, strategy, and a visible human voice

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• Decode Econ

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Brian spotted an Insights Association poll asking one simple question: what should the insights industry’s biggest priority be in 2027? The four options were responsible use of AI, data quality and trust, proving the value of insights, and building next-gen talent. He sent it to Andrew, and they decided to just talk through all of it on the pod.

What followed was one of their more honest episodes in a while. They work through each priority on its own terms: what it actually means and whether the industry is actually equipped to tackle it. The responsible AI conversation turns into a sharp critique of conference culture, where nobody is getting on stage to talk about where AI breaks. The data quality section goes deep on why transparency is still the industry’s biggest structural gap. And the next-gen talent discussion raises a question nobody has a clean answer to: how do you build the next generation of researchers when the job itself is changing faster than any curriculum can track?

Key Takeaways:

• Why responsible AI use is meaningless without someone willing to get on stage and talk about where it fails

• Why data quality and trust are two different problems that keep getting bundled into one unanswerable priority

• What happens to the industry if a billion-dollar AI company acquires a major traditional research firm and applies VC growth expectations to it

If you loved the episode, have comments, or want to appear on the show, connect with us down below!

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• LinkedIn (Signal & Noise)

• YouTube

• ROI Rocket

After a small break, Brian and Andrew are back. Both came with independent lists, sat down, and went back and forth for an hour on something they have been doing together for over a decade: running brand tracking studies the right way.

Between them, they have overseen the in-field transition of more than ten large continuous tracking programs, launched dozens more, and spent years studying exactly how panel bias shows up in longitudinal data in ways that most researchers never catch. This episode is the playbook they wish existed when they started.

The conversation covers how to think about blending panels for a tracker, why your anchor panel is the most important decision you will make, how inherent panel bias gets built in through recruiting practices that panels will never volunteer to you, why over-engineering the blend is its own form of data corruption, and why NPS in a tracker is a trap waiting to spring.

If you run a tracker, manage a tracker, or are about to set one up, this one is worth a full listen.

Key Takeaways:

• Why your anchor panel is the single most important structural decision in a blended tracker

• How panels develop inherent brand bias through their own recruiting, and why they will never tell you about it

• Why NPS is dangerous in a tracker and how to use it without blowing up your trend line

If you loved the episode, have comments, or want to appear on the show, connect with us down below!

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• ROI Rocket