She emphasizes the importance of combining AI tools with human insight and stakeholder alignment to create meaningful business impact. Griesmer explains how AI helps her team synthesize global data more efficiently, allowing for deeper local nuance and cultural understanding.
The conversation also highlighted the challenge of maintaining a pulse on consumers across a 24-month go-to-market process and the need for ongoing global consumer access.
Influencing the Business
All Things Insights: We’re here at TMRE 2025 with Kasey Griesmer, Director of Global Consumer Insights and Analytics, New Balance. Thank you for talking to us today about insights. You’ve presented a session at the show. Can you just delve into that a little bit, about New Balance and how brands are moving into new directions?
Kasey Griesmer: My session was heavily focused on how we interweave both all this data that we have at our fingertips, plus the human element, plus making sure we’re aligned internally with our stakeholders. A lot of what I talked about focused on that we have all these new things that are coming our way when it comes to AI and ways to do insights faster, and that’s great. But if we’re not creating a process internally to make sure that we’re digesting that information and partnering with our stakeholders and functions to ensure we’re on the same page of how that impacts our strategy, it won’t be as influential within the business.
That was kind of a big takeaway. Another key takeaway was just from the global perspective, it’s really hard to keep a pulse on consumers very quickly. As I go to market, it’s almost a 24-month process. So having that ongoing access to consumers at a global scale is something that’s helped us move really quickly.
Creating a Global Point of View
All Things Insights: What also struck me about your session was there was a lot about the cultural context of understanding the consumer. How does AI play a role now? And you mentioned, it took 24 months to go to market. Does the speed of consumer insights really increase now with AI?
Kasey Griesmer: I think my stance so far on AI and insights has been leveraging it as a tool to help us move faster and synthesize all the data at our disposal versus replace any sort of human element. So, from a global level, as I mentioned, we have to have a point of view across multiple regions that we serve. What is that global human truth and that string tying it all together?
That can be difficult to find across hundreds of reports both internally and externally. AI has been helpful in terms of digesting all of that data and helping point us in the right direction so that my team can go a little bit further and tell that story to our stakeholders. That’s been really helpful for us, just digesting and then summarizing some of that versus any replacement for a human feeling and interaction, and then that gives us time to have that more local nuance and understand how we can communicate more deeply to a region when, yes, this might be a global human truth. Then when we look at it deeper for your region, here’s what you should pay attention to.
Informing Strategy
All Things Insights: You talked about the speed, the automation, and the efficiency. Then you mentioned stakeholders. Delivering that last mile to the stakeholders is really being transformed now as there’s more time supposedly for being more of the business strategist. Do you feel that that is transforming in this next era of insights?
Kasey Griesmer: I think we have a unique opportunity as insights leaders to play a strategic role in informing strategy versus just validating, especially with all these tools at our fingertips. I think a lot of people in the business will lean on us as experts of the data, and so kind of using that to fuel those conversations and play a role in really driving direction versus just validating assumptions.
For me, it would be a big opportunity. And then as you just think about stakeholders internally, just growing that partnership with them and helping them feel like they understand and trust where the data is coming from, how we’re utilizing AI, and where we are still playing a big role in terms of being the translators and the storytellers for them.
All Things Insights: Speaking of storytelling, is the data storytelling narrative advancing now with not just AI, but technology or the speed? Has that changed over time?
Kasey Griesmer: I think, unfortunately, we all have much shorter attention spans today, which has almost demanded our storytelling to be much more concise and punchy, I would say. What’s landed with my team is just creating really short and digestible pieces of information and then linking back to all the things at our disposal for those who really want to dive deeper.
But I think that’s been a big shift recently, and that’s natural as we kind of have less time and less attention. But that’s where I think storytelling is going to shift a bit. How do we tighten it up even more but still tell the impactful story and the connection to the consumer at speed?
Leading With Empathy
All Things Insights: One last question. All Things Insights created some pieces on women in insights, and we were struck by all the responses that we received, especially about empathy, understanding the consumer and having this empathetic approach. Is that something that today’s insights professional needs?
Kasey Griesmer: I think everyone should lead with empathy. We kind of talked about this in the session I had with some women in research the other day, but what’s great is we intuitively have that often. Leading with empathy with the consumer helps, I would think, understand them more deeply and building that relationship with them. I mentioned this in my session, but sometimes I think people confuse having a target consumer with the brand trying to be that consumer, and it’s actually quite the opposite.
It’s trying to deeply understand and connect with them and build a relationship because if you think about the strongest relationships in your life, they’re founded in shared values, people who push you and tell it like it is, people who encourage you to take risks, and those are the type of people that help you grow as a person. I feel that’s the type of relationship we should have with our consumer because then that will help us grow, learn, and evolve culturally as a brand.
You can’t do that without empathy, understanding where they come from, and knowing that we’re a hundred-year-old brand. But we need to understand who our consumer is today and how their lives are affected by everything happening around them.
All Things Insights: It all comes back to understanding the consumer and having that emotional connection with them. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us today.
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.
