Donagher explains the tension and interplay between traditional data storytelling and the C-suite’s demand for quick, actionable decisions. The interview also explores AI’s current role in speeding up research processes and handling routine work, while questioning whether AI can revolutionize insights to become an always-on decision-making tool that elevates the community’s strategic value.
Keeping Pace with Business Strategies
All Things Insights: We are here on the first day of TMRE 2025, and we have the pleasure of being with Paul Donagher, Head of Client Growth, Radius Insights. Thanks so much. Radius Insights is sponsoring a session on insights to impact, and the activation of strategies. How do you see that changing with the future of insights, this next era of insights as the conference has discussed?
Paul Donagher: Activating strategies is so important in the business. Absolutely. What our clients come to us for is really to help them make decisions and make decisions that will be impactful for their brand. So brand growth is absolutely crucial to what we do at Radius, and activation has always been a crucial part of that. But in this kind of fast-moving pace, this evolutionary world or revolutionary world of insights now it is more important than ever. These clients are trying to keep pace with what they’re hearing from their stakeholders and what they understand from consumers and consumer needs. And given that, we have to move very quickly when it comes to activation.
The Speed of Insights Today
All Things Insights: Speaking of that last mile and the activation of insights and then the ROI, that’s always been a little bit of a fuzzy area for insights, or at least to some degree. Is that accelerating now as well just with the use of AI and the speed of business?
Paul Donagher: Time to insights is very important, and the speed of business at the moment is crucial, and that we get the insights to our clients as soon as we can. And activation is a crucial part of that. So moving from insights to action planning, but then moving from action planning to decision making.
The faster we can get our clients to decision making, the better. Now the ROI of that has always been crucial to a company like Radius because that’s when clients come back to us and say, we noticed the ROI from this project. We noticed the ROI from this product launch or whatever it may have been. We trust Radius with that. But still, ROI in research is something that can be very difficult to ascertain.
I was talking to someone earlier. They said it can be as much PR as MR. So when something goes really well, and it could be six months down the line, 18 months down the line, whatever the product cycle might be, go back and remind all of your stakeholders, remember that research that we did for only X amount? Look at how that’s paid off for us. And they have to be the PR part of that whole journey.
Creating the Data Storytelling Journey
All Things Insights: That whole journey—is data storytelling part of that journey? That’s advancing now in this era of AI. That’s always been important for the market research professional, the storytelling aspect. Do you see that changing and transforming?
Paul Donagher: It’s changed dramatically this year, and I see it changing dramatically going forward. We’ve always said in Radius that you’ve never cracked the code when it comes to storytelling. There’s always ways to get better with visualization, with the words that you use and the headlines and how they tell the story. And that for us has been a very important part of our business.
It feels like we’re at a really transitional point, though, within research because what our clients and key stakeholders want and the C-suite really want are the pieces of data that help them make decisions and even tell them the decisions to make.
Now down the chain, if you like, or some of our direct clients, they still need to know the story behind the data, and they need to know the story that gets them there. But more and more of our clients and this is really some tension within the industry just now, I think, between telling a great story, which we still have to do, and getting and telling our clients what decisions they should make very quickly.
You can’t do both necessarily or some clients don’t want both. Some of the C-suite don’t necessarily need to know the story behind the decision. We trust you guys. We trust that you got there in the right way. Tell us what the decisions are, and we know the story behind it. If we ever want to find that out here is the information, but in the meantime, get straight to the decision. We’re almost at a place of real tension in the industry between those great stories that we are known for as an industry and I hope Radius is known for as a company and then getting those decisions to our clients very quickly.
At the Right Place & Time
All Things Insights: This speed of doing business, as we were saying, is part of it with the storytelling, but to have that story if needed, behind the insights is key. Tell us just a little bit about Radius Insights. I know Radius has expanded recently.
Paul Donagher: We have. So Radius is based in North America, we’ve been around since 1960 actually, under various different names. Recently, Radius has grown pretty considerably. We’ve grown in the UK market. We merged with a company called Strive that is now Radius EMEA.
Recently in North America, we’ve brought on a couple of different arms that are going to be really focused on what will become RadiusTech and RadiusAuto as we expand our industry coverage and our industry expertise. We’re really excited to bring on the team from Illuminaz that will become RadiusTech and the team from Seventh Sense who will become RadiusAuto. We’ve just brought in some great people, some great technology, some great thinkers. The Radius brand is as strong as as I can remember it and poised to grow.
All Things Insights: What are your thoughts on just a final question about this next year of insights with AI plus HI, as this is the formula it’s supposed to be. Right? Or people are thinking it might be. How do you see that playing out?
Paul Donagher: I think what we have figured out so far for AI is what can it do faster and what can it do to take up some of the grunt work for the humans? What we haven’t figured out necessarily is how can it revolutionize what we do in terms of insights. So it can go faster. It can take out a lot of the heavy lifting for us that humans could do.
But how can it go that step further and become that tool that will then allow us to elevate insights so that it really becomes that always-on decision making tool And it becomes something that our clients can rely on and really “get us,” and everybody says this, that seat at the table, which is what insights really demands and should have. But can AI be the tool that does all those things? Does it let us think about insights in a revolutionary manner? I think that’s where I feel we are right now as an industry, and it’s an exciting time. You can look at it and be worried about it, or you can look at it and think, that is incredibly exciting for our industry.
We’re at the place where we want to be.
Editor’s Note: The next TMRE will take place on October 5-7, 2026, and will be co-located with Content Marketing World at the Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO.
