What Do You Actually Do? Episode 70: Elizabeth, Consultant and market researcher in the heritage sector

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Listen to this and all the previous episodes.

Elizabeth studied History of Art and thought she’d go into museum curation, until she discovered the amazing world of consultancy in the heritage sector! She helps museums, theatres and galleries solve problems… everything from how to boost visitor numbers to launching new learning programmes.

If you have always wanted to work in heritage and you’re interested in what makes people tick, this could be the career for you.

Elizabeth’s bio: I work with arts and cultural organisations helping them to understand more about the people who visit them and how to grow, engage and satisfy their audiences

Transcript and useful links on the blog.

Useful links

Transcript

Kate 

Hello and welcome to this episode of what do you actually do? My name is Kate Morris, and I’ll be your host today. In today’s episode, we’ll be talking about working in market research consultancy within the museums and cultural sector. Today, we’re joined by Liz McDermott, who works as a consultant with Maurice Hargreaves McIntyre and they’re an international strategy and insight consultancy that specialises in working with charities, heritage and cultural groups. So Liz, that sounds really interesting. What do you actually do? 

Liz 

Well, firstly, thank you for having me and my job is very varied. So I obviously work in the arts and heritage sector, but my day-to-day job involves leading on projects for art galleries, museums, theatres, heritage organisations, charities, kind of a real a real mix of places and and what we do is that organisation will usually come to us with a problem, so it might be that they want to increase their visitors, it might be that they want to engage with their visitors more, it might be that they want to increase their their number of members at their organisation, it might be that they want to do a new learning programme, it might be that they have, you know, they have a big exhibition coming up. They wanna know who’s gonna come to it. There’s all sorts of different questions that they have, but they would come to us and my team. And we’d have a think about the problem and the best way to solve it. We’d come up with a research proposal, so we might suggest that a survey is the right way to go. Or we should do some focus groups or even stuff like you know if a museum’s considering a new brand, we might help them come up with that so we’ll do some internal workshops with them we’ll speak to all of them as a staff and get an idea of who that who that museum is and how they want to go about introducing themselves to the world. So we’ll kind of come up with the scope of research to help them get the answer or the solution to their problem, and then we’ll we’ll do all the research for them. So we we’ll do all the surveys, we’ll do the focus groups, we’ll analyse all the data. and write it a nice succinct report, and then we’ll help feed that back and help embed that within the organisation. So it might be ideas for new marketing. It might be ideas for new audiences, you know a group of people that they might not considered appealing to you before might be away for them to go. Or it might be coming up with a new type of membership offer that they hadn’t considered, so you know a new package or a new way to appeal to audiences or with an exhibition it might be, you know, this, this group of people are gonna be really interested in this exhibition and they’re gonna be the first people to come so tell them about it first and then they’re gonna tell their friends. And this is how you can kind of snowball your visits. So it’s kind of, it’s very varied, there’s something different every day, but, on the whole, it’s taking the problems of museums, art galleries and cultural organisations and helping them solve them. 

Kate 

Are you kind of sat in an office and doing this research? Are you going out and about to different museums because it sounds like you really need a good understanding of what the museum’s about. Do you get to visit? Do you get to actually experience it for yourself or is it more desk based research? 

Liz 

A bit of both. So obviously with Covid it’s been a lot more desk based recently, but nothing beats going to the place itself and for so many of the types of projects I work on just being in situ is helpful. So for example if it’s a new exhibition that we’re working on, we’d often want to go and meet with the curators and we’d want to have a look around and you know, see what the ideas are. You know what, what is going to be in the exhibition? What kind of artworks are they thinking about including? Often we’re doing things that might involve observations. Or on site interviews with people in the museums themselves. So in which case we might want to go and visit, work out the best place for our interviewers to stand, or just get an idea of what the what the space feels like itself. And then if we’re going to do a workshop with the team inside the museum. So if we’ve done a project. That we kind of come up with the with the answer to the problem and we wanna go back and tell the say it’s it’s a theatre. What what we think they should do quite often part of that is going into the theatre itself and working with the different teams. So we work, we like to do that face to face as much as possible so whilst the kind of the actual doing the research there’s quite a kind of an office based phase I do tend to have to go and visit places quite often. You know, there’s a lot of catching trains and going to meet people involved in my job. 

Kate 

That sounds like a nice balance of a bit of both there really. Where did your interest in market research and consultancy come from? So you did a degree in art history, followed by a Masters in Art Gallery Museum. Studies. So where did the sort of market research element come in? 

Liz 

I sort of by accident really. But I’d say so I always knew I wanted to work in the arts and wanted to work in the culture sector. Now when I was a student at York, I imagine that would be I was gonna be a curator of an art gallery. And I’d be very happy doing that. I did  my masters still thinking that was gonna be the outcome. Those jobs are hard to come by. And what I found doing my masters is that I really. I was really interested in visitor studies and you know who visits an art gallery, how you reach those people, how you create exhibitions for those people. I was really interested in learning and outreach. And that kind of side of of the museum and art gallery world, I suppose. When I was graduating from my masters, there was a position available at Maurice McIntyre. I knew nothing about research. I still feel like I’m learning a lot about it, even after nearly ten years doing it, but I think I kind of saw that the job at my house, my entire would give me a chance to work with a lot of the places that I’d like to work with. You know those, you know, art galleries and museums that I’d love to work with and that are my clients today. And I think I recognise that actually all those things I was interested in about understanding audiences and who is it who goes to the museum, I could get a lot out of this job, and so it kind of a bit of me kind of having an interest in it, but then also a little bit of the job finding me. It definitely wasn’t kind of where I expected to end up, but I’m really pleased I did end up there because I think it’s given me a lot of the things that I was looking for in my career. Lots of variety working in that sector, but across lots of different ideas and with lots of different people like those are the things I enjoy the most. And so I think working in market research in that sector, it’s kind of a really good fit for me. 

Kate 

So when you applied for that first job then if you sort of felt oh, I know nothing about research which I would challenge given that you have a Masters degree. But if you felt like ohh, I’m not a market research expert, was the job open to people from different backgrounds or were you just kind of chancing it? What made you feel like, Yeah, I’ve got a shot at this. If if you felt like I’m really interested in the topic, but actually I’m not sure if I’m qualified for it. That’s the sort of often when I see arts and humanity, students who are not sure what they want to do, they have this worry about what am I actually qualified to do. 

Liz 

Yeah, I definitely remember that feeling myself. I think. We’re really open to the idea of taking on people who maybe didn’t have as much kind of formal research experience in terms of writing surveys, conducting focus groups and those sorts of things, it was very much like this is a job where you can learn to do that. I know what they were looking for were people who had an interest in and knowledge in the sector, and I think that’s something that’s quite hard to come by having worked in market research jobs more broadly as well, since first starting at MHM because I stepped out and worked at another agency for a while, often those kind of skills are quite you can learn them on the job. And what people are looking for is kind of the right behaviours and the right values, so you know, obviously I had an interest and a knowledge and a specialism in the arts but also, I was just curious about people and I was open to learning and I kind of had the communication skills and the organisation skills that you need to be a researcher, so a lot of research, it isn’t just conducting the research, it’s presenting the research. It’s understanding how to take that, take all the data that you’ve generated. And make it into a story that’s relevant and interesting for the people who are gonna ultimately use that information. So having those softer skills, I suppose, is something and and even when I’m interviewing people now that that’s what I’m looking for when we’re hiring new people is the kind. They’ve got the right disciplines, you know, they can communicate. They can think they can. They’re curious.  They’ll organise, they can present themselves well, those are the sorts of things that I could do. I think when I was starting out, that meant that I could get on into a job. Where then I learned the kind of the more formal. 

Kate 

That’s really interesting and I think  that’s true of a lot of different career areas. It’s that interest and enthusiasm and kind of potential for doing the job. The technical skills can be taught. And but I think people really underestimate how valuable those softer skills, so to speak, actually, are that they they don’t come naturally to everybody and they are really, really important in lots of different jobs. 

Liz 

Yeah, I think like that’s something that I probably go back and tell myself now is that actually I probably had all of the skills I, you know, I felt like I knew nothing when I was graduating other than kind of a very specialist understanding of my topic. But I I think yeah, a lot of those soft skills that you do just pick up from being able to organise your time to you know prepare for a seminar or three. Things like extracurricular activities, you know, organising. Like events and getting together with like some in our group and preparing a debate for the for the next seminar, like those, those sorts of skills are all relevant and I I perhaps didn’t see that enough myself when I was graduating. 

Kate 

You mentioned that you’ve been sort of working in the market research sector for a good ten years now. What is it that you really love about the work. What keeps you kind of learning and enjoying it? 

Liz 

I think when you go back to what I said earlier about the variety. I love the variety of the different projects that I work on. So everything is different and every day is different. It’s not that I like, I come in every day and do the same task over and over again. It’s so, so varied. So just this week I’ve had calls with clients to kick off a kick off some projects I’ve had calls with prospective clients to talk about future pros. That I’ve caught up with my teammates to talk about how we’re going to tackle a particular problem. I’ve been writing a report. I’ve been writing a discussion guide. I’ve kind of I’ve just had such variety just in one week of what I’ve been doing. So I think that’s something for me, keeps the job interesting, but also I just find people endlessly fascinating. My job is basically, I mean, I talk quite a lot at work and and a few of my colleagues do about our job is finding out what makes people tick. So it’s constantly asking but why and why is that important and why do you care about those things. It’s kind of all the things that you wish you got to ask people that you meet, that’s my job is to ask them those questions. And so it’s constantly like just picking back layers and layers and asking more questions. And I find that endlessly fascinating. And especially when it’s talking about arts and culture, you know, I’ve had sessions with people who talked about why they love live theatre and just listening to people talk about why they love that. You know, there’s so many different reasons and people around the table, you know, I can talk to have a whole group say something different about why they love it and I get to ask them for more and ask them why and ask them to go into more detail and like, why is asking people what they think of an exhibition. I’ve had people who have started crying after seeing an exhibition because it was so moving and I get to ask them about why was it moving and why are they moved and why is it so important to them. I just get to have fascinating conversations every day and that’s why I love it. 

Kate 

That does sound amazing, actually. What’s the worst bit then? What’s the bit that you sort of put up with to allow you to do all that wonderful kind of discovery and conversation? 

Liz 

Ohh good question I think so I work in the private sector and often when you’re working in the private sector, you’re kind of beholden to the clients. And clients are great and especially in the in the art sector, they’re always people that I’m really interested to meet and are like minded and get on with many of my clients very well. But with that, you know, there’s always kind of someone paying the paycheck at the end of the day so there’s a lot of you know if they change their mind halfway through. You’re gonna have to change your plan. You’re gonna have to go back and do things again. If you’re working to a deadline and that deadline coming up and you’ve not found the answer to their question, then you’re gonna be working some late nights. You’re gonna kind of be up against it to try and to try and get the answer to them, so that that’s probably the hardest bit. You’re always dancing to the beat of your clients drum. 

Kate 

Yeah, I think that’s an important one to think about for people who are thinking they might want to following your footsteps and work in this area. What do you think will be the key challenges for market research consultancy, particularly within the cultural sector, over the next few years because there’s so much going on in the world right now, I’m kind of interested in sort of forward-looking. What are the things that are on your radar to be preparing for and anticipating and things that students and recent grads could perhaps think about or research a little bit more and consider how their skills might fit with that, so that the future needs of the sector in terms of the research sector? 

Liz 

There’s always new methodologies coming, especially sort of digital methodologies and even things like AI. And how does that play a role in the, the type of research we do, I think the the nature of market research even just since the outbreak of Covid and I imagine lots of people say Covid changed things a lot, but I’ve noticed that whereas before I’d be doing focus groups in person and booking a room and, you know, making sure everyone got lots of tea and coffee ready. Now I can do a focus group online and I can just jump on zoom and get respondents that way and in some ways it’s better because it means I can get a real mix of people and they don’t need to be local to where I’m doing the focus group. They don’t need to be able to get there, it’s more convenient for the rest. But also there’s things that are lost, so I don’t get to kind of get that feeling of people in the room. I don’t get to sort of assess body language. I don’t necessarily get to take them to, you know, show them things physically if I if it’s an exhibition I, you know, I can’t show them the exhibition and get them to respond to it in real time. And so there’s challenges with that and I think there’s, you know, I’m no expert in sort of digital methods and there’s. Some of my colleagues would probably be ahead of it more than me, but those are sort of definitely things to be aware of is that how are those, how is the increase of AI and digital techniques, I suppose. And digital software gonna change the way that we conduct research? I think that’s something to be aware of. And maybe you’d be thinking about. Especially if you’re interviewing for market research agencies and then the other thing for me, and this is just something I’ve noticed coming up in, in a lot of my qualitative work. So when I’m doing interviews or focus groups with people is kind of an awareness of culture wars is kind of a thing that’s come up in in the news of the over the last few years and I’ve noticed that play out in a lot of my projects recently, so being able to manage people with really contrasting opinions. I’ve done focus groups where there’s been people who have really diverging opinions. And how do you manage a conversation? Between those people where people you know you wanna make sure that nobody’s feeling threatened or feeling vulnerable, but you still want people to be their honest version of themselves and share their honest opinions. You don’t want people to be kind of masking themselves in that way, so that’s something that I’m thinking about a lot is how can I make my research more ethical and make sure that it’s inclusive and that people feel valued and respected. But how can I also make sure that there’s room for all these different opinions and that those are managed appropriately?  

Kate 

That’s really interesting cause I imagine the actual client is really interested in the sort of different types of opinions rather than everyone just saying the same thing, it’s probably useful for them to hear that wider spectrum and perhaps in the past they have just heard more of a skewed version. If it is the same type of person that is, you know, a living in the area that where you’re available and B who’s able to. Participate in these kind of things. So that’s yeah, that sounds like a real interesting change and development within the sector, is there anything else any of the sort of tips for students kind of wanting to either get some experience of market research consultancy to test out if it’s for them or anything that would help them be a more attractive candidate to an employer in this sector? 

Liz 

I think most agencies I’ve worked at especially sort of smaller agencies, are always open to people getting in touch, asking for work experience, asking for internships. We always need help. It’s always busy. So if people are, you know, have a summer off and they want to kind of get a bit of. Experience. I’d say. Always try, try and get in touch with places because we’re always grateful for help in terms of other things you can do. I think really think about the types of research you’re doing on your course. Like I said, I kind of didn’t really think coming from a humanities background that I had many research skills, but then actually, you know, when I was doing the. Started doing the job. I kind of recognised some things from from my from my degree. So think about the different types of methods you’re using. So even things like speaking to your professors and they’re those are interview skills. So those are kind of things that you have experience of moderating a seminar group that’s just like moderating a focus group. You know, being able to bring people’s opinions in, being able to make sure that you get through all the questions on your discussion guide that those are useful skills, and likewise just being able to review data and kind of review it critically. So if you’ve done some background reading for your subject area and you’ve kind of been like well, well I think I agree with this point more than this point and this seems more relevant to the argument I’m going to make in my essay, then this point is that’s kind of quite a research skill in a way that’s being able to analyse data and pull out the salient points. That’s kind of what we do every day. So I think that it’s really paying attention to the different things you’re doing and how they contribute to research. It’s kind of it’s not all just being able to pull the chart together in Excel. It’s it’s some of those like more varied skills as well. 

Kate 

That’s fantastic. Thank you. Well, for more info about the careers we’ve mentioned today, I’m gonna add some relevant links to the episode description and a link to the full transcript of today’s show. But Liz, thank you so much for taking time to do this today. It’s been really interesting. Your job sounds amazing. And I’m sure lots of students and graduates would be really interested to hear about it. It’s not something that often springs to mind when people are thinking about future careers, but it does tick so many boxes if you, as you’ve sort of described yourself. So yeah, thank you for, for sharing your experiences. 

Liz 

Thank you for having me.