WEBVTT 00:00:00.180 --> 00:00:01.950 >> My name is Carla Bursoi. 00:00:01.950 --> 00:00:07.290 I currently head up consumer insights and marketing for AOL. 00:00:07.290 --> 00:00:11.610 I work in one particular division, which is AOL Services, which encompasses a lot of the things 00:00:11.610 --> 00:00:18.050 that you're familiar with for AOL, including the homepage, email, AIM. 00:00:18.050 --> 00:00:23.390 Sometimes I touch the client, and then we have emerging businesses, as well. 00:00:23.390 --> 00:00:27.170 So it used to be that like -- someone like me would be called a market researcher, 00:00:27.170 --> 00:00:30.140 but I actually span more than traditional market research. 00:00:30.140 --> 00:00:32.330 So I don't just do focus groups. 00:00:32.330 --> 00:00:34.270 I don't just do surveys. 00:00:34.270 --> 00:00:37.160 We actually just spend a lot of time dealing with web analytics, 00:00:37.160 --> 00:00:40.030 social media analysis, lifetime value. 00:00:40.030 --> 00:00:42.030 So there's like a financial analysis, as well. 00:00:42.030 --> 00:00:46.450 But it's all about how you understand what your consumers are doing, 00:00:46.450 --> 00:00:48.850 and what are your potential consumers doing? 00:00:48.850 --> 00:00:51.460 What are the trends that are happening in the marketplace? 00:00:51.460 --> 00:00:54.550 What are things that we can do to make our products better? 00:00:54.550 --> 00:00:59.660 And that could be a deep dive on a particular product, or it could be going 00:00:59.660 --> 00:01:04.050 out into the marketplace and just trying to understand what consumer needs there are. 00:01:04.050 --> 00:01:06.820 So I've done everything from a lot of ethnography, 00:01:06.820 --> 00:01:09.490 where we're just literally going in-home and spending time with people, 00:01:09.490 --> 00:01:12.670 and you're watching them do whatever it is that they do. 00:01:12.670 --> 00:01:18.600 Or maybe people in coffee shops or even sitting down and like talking to people in a mall 00:01:18.600 --> 00:01:21.820 and interrupting them and talking to them there. 00:01:21.820 --> 00:01:23.710 There is no typical day. 00:01:23.710 --> 00:01:28.500 Because my work spans both marketing and consumer insights, what -- 00:01:28.500 --> 00:01:30.740 like today was a day that was full of meetings. 00:01:30.740 --> 00:01:35.310 And one meeting was literally going through copy for one of the new products 00:01:35.310 --> 00:01:38.380 that we're working on, and we're launching a mobile version, and it has a tour. 00:01:38.380 --> 00:01:42.530 I had another meeting later, looking at copy for some marketing campaigns. 00:01:42.530 --> 00:01:46.990 And then yet, I had another meeting, trying to figure out what the usability should be 00:01:46.990 --> 00:01:49.660 like for a particular product and should we tweak the design 00:01:49.660 --> 00:01:52.360 or change it, based on what we know. 00:01:52.360 --> 00:01:55.530 So there's those -- there's days like that, that are just like getting stuff done. 00:01:55.530 --> 00:01:59.920 There might be a day where I have my head down all day, and I'm like re-watching videos, 00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:01.760 or I might be crunching some data in Excel. 00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:03.850 I might be running correlations. 00:02:03.850 --> 00:02:04.870 There could be that. 00:02:04.870 --> 00:02:09.520 There might be a day where I spend the whole day on Twitter or Facebook and dig into that. 00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:13.200 Or be writing and talking to -- talking to people and engaging them that way. 00:02:13.200 --> 00:02:19.530 Today I also talked to somebody about running some tests in some digital marketing campaigns. 00:02:19.530 --> 00:02:21.180 So it sort of runs -- that might be one day. 00:02:21.180 --> 00:02:24.660 And then there might be a day we're again in somebody's home or, you know, 00:02:24.660 --> 00:02:25.900 this weekend, I was at a conference. 00:02:25.900 --> 00:02:27.930 So just every day is very different.