The Challenges & Triumphs of Change with Rita Huang

This month, I spoke to Rita Huang, who is currently a Senior Manager, Consumer & Market Insights, at L’Oréal Italia.

What roles have you worked in before your current one?

I lived in Canada for most of my life and started working in a research agency straight after university. I then completed an MBA to gain a broader understanding of marketing, which led me into PR and communications, first at Huawei, and later helped an agency launch a new China branch leading everything from ground up.

After that, I returned to research. First at Toptal (a freelancing platform). It was an interesting experience, as I had to learn and deliver insights across both sides of the business, the client side and the talent side.

Four years ago, I moved to L'Oréal Italia, where I now lead insight for both the makeup and fragrances categories, with a focus on trends and social listening. 

When you moved client-side, after working in an agency, what was the biggest difference vs. what you expected?

That projects don't have an end point anymore! In an agency role, you receive a brief, design an approach, execute, present, action the feedback, and you’re done.

Client-side, you have to look at the full picture - assessing how the research can be leveraged both in the short and long term, and whether it can be segmented to answer multiple business questions. Once you have results, you also need to communicate them in different ways to different teams, each with their own language. The same insight can take a different shape in each part of the business, but it always carries the same core message. 

Do you think your experience in PR and communications helped you with that process?

I was at Huawei during a period when the company faced significant geopolitical scrutiny. That situation created a great deal of complexity, and we had to manage a wide range of messaging across a diverse group of journalists and creators. 

Every message had to be calibrated to its audience, for example, what type of journalist you were speaking to, what their underlying objective was, and, in the case of content creators, their tone of voice. In many ways, it was leveraging the same skills: success came down to translating the same substance into the right language for each audience, a skill that turns out to be just as essential in client-side insight roles, especially speaking to your stakeholders.

Do you think people in insight would benefit from similar experience to yours to help them create change in businesses?

I think insight professionals would benefit from taking the same approach we'd use with a focus group- really listening to stakeholders to understand their real needs, rather than assuming we already know how a message will be interpreted or used once it's delivered.

We can always try to keep message delivery fun and engaging, but it's harder to get an answer to the question: was this really useful to you?

Are there any other areas you think insight professionals find particularly challenging?

The challenge with insights is that it lacks a direct, measurable link to growth — clear KPIs that prove impact. This means we will always be, to some extent, a supporting function. Even when a brand truly targets its consumers by adapting an experience or a touchpoint based on research, the connection between that insight and the resulting marketing outcome is rarely something you can measure directly.

Are there any areas of insight work where you feel it’s easier or more practical to prove the impact of our work?

Yes, some areas are more direct than others - there are practical ways we prove the impact of our work daily, more directly in some areas and less in others. For example, when working with marketing mix modelling and market data, stakeholders engage with it differently. I think that's because both feel like a direct report card, something concrete and easy to grasp, while insights can seem more hypothetical by comparison.

What other factors do you think impact the extent to which insights teams can create change in businesses?

How you position yourself, as a team and as individuals, matters enormously- in a corporate setting, how you're perceived can matter as much as the work itself. Sometimes you need to be seen as the people who deliver clean, credible data. Other times, you need to be seen as the people who turn that data into action. And sometimes, you do the storytelling to help you stakeholder live in the shoes of their consumers. Knowing which identity to lead with, and when, is a skill in itself.

And what areas do you think insights need to be ‘data people’ and which require them to be ‘action people’?

It depends on who you're talking to. Functions like finance, for example, want insights to stay in 'data people' mode: give them the facts, and they'll draw their own conclusions. Others, like marketing teams, expect insights to have already translated the data into a recommendation: what it truly means for the business, and what to do about it. In that case, you need to show up as 'action people' from the start.

Do you think this is also because you’re dealing with behavioural rather than claimed data?

The behavioural nature of the data helps, but what matters more is that the data and method fit the audience. Digital scraping reveals far more about Gen Z than a focus group would, since online is their natural habitat, while for Boomers it's much less That's why applying the same methodology across generations makes projects like segmentations hard to socialise, and for some groups, it simply won't be the right fit – leveraging a diverse methodology and sources helps you get closer to your consumers. 

You mentioned AI tools. Have you found it's harder to get people to listen to if you’re using AI tools that stakeholders are less familiar with?

I think stakeholders care much more about the language you speak to them in, and how you can help them to use insight versus how you gathered your insight. Stakeholders trust that their insights teams are using the appropriate approaches while providing actionable insights.

How would you like to see AI as an insight tool evolve in the future?

It’d be nice to see more ways we can use AI as a consumer/stakeholder interface vs. a research tool. Like having agents that accurately represent different consumer segments.

Finally, is there anything you think insight teams need to think about more to ensure their work drives change?

Recently I've been thinking about why so many content creators build such successful, wealthy careers, and a big part of it comes down to how well they sell and celebrate themselves. It reminds me of something an old VP once said to me: that researchers just aren't cool. We sit behind computers, we make slides. Since then, I've made it a point to make whatever role I'm in as compelling and meaningful as possible and I think insight professionals, as a whole, should do the same! Own the role, promote it, and celebrate the work we do! 

This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.