Minds, Meet Hearts

Joe Willke earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame and did his graduate work in Paris at L’Institut Catholique.
In 1983, Joe joined Nielsen’s BASES organization and rose to Vice President of Research and Development and then to Executive Vice President of Client Service. He assumed the presidency of BASES in 2001 and then of Nielsen’s Modeling & Analytics organization in 2004. In 2005, he became President of ACNielsen Advisory Services. In 2006, Joe assumed responsibility for Nielsen’s Consumer products globally. In 2009, Joe shifted roles, becoming President of Nielsen’s P&G relationship, serving as the global lead for the Nielsen Company with Procter & Gamble worldwide.
Starting in 2013, Joe became the President of Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience, the consumer neuroscience division of Nielsen. This unit employs state-of-the-art brain-wave research to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of marketing communications such as advertising and packaging.
The Cincinnati native is married to Megan Murray and has two young children, Josh and Sage.

Carl is a co-founder of Innerscope Research and a globally recognized leader in the new field of social and consumer neuroscience. He describes Innerscope as “smart people using amazing technologies to help brand teams answer challenging and unique business problems.” Carl is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and is both the former director of social neuroscience at Massachusetts General Hospital and a past visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Program in Media Arts & Sciences. He received his Master’s of Arts in psychology and philosophy at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and completed his doctorate with honors at Harvard Medical School. He has extensive training in biological psychology and neuroscience through two National Institute of Health research fellowships, has lectured internationally and has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed science journals.

Corrinne is responsible for overseeing global field operations, and works closely with the project teams to meet all field staffing, scheduling and equipment needs. She also serves as a field analyst and travels around the globe to collect biometric and eye-tracking data for our clients. Corrinne received her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, double majoring in psychology and communication and graduating summa cum laude, while working as both a teaching assistant for the University of Massachusetts department of psychology and as a research assistant. She achieved her Master’s of Arts in communication, media, and cultural studies at Northeastern University. Corrinne loves traveling, pretending to ski, karaoke, cupcakes and her amazing 22-year-old cat, Belle.

When John first learned about Innerscope, he was intrigued, thinking that “it brought together aspects of psychology and biology that I believed to be much more compelling than traditional market research.” John has been a core member of the Innerscope team since 2007 and is responsible for maintaining the integrity of all data streams and providing oversight for the complete data analysis process from field collection through report writing. John works to continuously refine Innerscope’s data metrics, identifying new opportunities for efficiency improvements and data automation. He received his Bachelor’s of Science in biology from the University of Michigan. When not at work, John enjoys tapping into his inner child by playing with his two young kids.

Brendan is a project manager at Innerscope Research and a recognized expert in human affective neuroscience. He joined Innerscope in 2013 after nearly a decade of academic research, utilizing behavioral and functional neuroimaging methodologies, to investigate how emotional experiences are remembered differently from less-emotional ones. He describes working at Innerscope as an exciting and fast-paced way to apply knowledge of human cognition and emotion to understanding human behavior and decision-making in real-world contexts. Prior to joining Innerscope Research, Brendan received his undergraduate B.S. degree in Psychology from Trinity College, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Boston College. Brendan has served as an undergraduate professor of Statistics and Affective Neuroscience at Boston College, and has lectured at conferences and universities around the world. His research on human emotion has been published in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals.

Naomi has spent the past decade specializing in advertising, consumer messaging and brand positioning research using quantitative and qualitative methodologies. What does she like best about working at Innerscope? “The chance to push the envelope on a hundred years of established market research practices—and to teach clients to take a risk and try something that’s cutting-edge and out of the norm. We help people go beyond their expectations of what market research can offer.” Her work on Innerscope’s biometric engagement study led to a first place win, with MTV Networks and Spike TV, in the 2011 Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing Insights Conference Case Study Competition. Prior to joining Innerscope, Naomi managed large research projects for the WPP-owned consulting firm Penn Schoen Berland. Naomi received her Bachelor’s of Arts from Columbia University and completed her Master’s of Science in media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Randall ensures that Innerscope study design and statistical analysis processes are scientifically sound and will result in unique and valuable insights for clients. “I ensure that the research we do will answer the questions our clients are asking,” says Randall. “This sometimes means helping the clients understand what their questions actually are before we do the research. It always means making sure that the research will result in answers that are scientifically valid.” Randall is also responsible for internal research focused on the development, refinement and validation of Innerscope’s data algorithms and product offerings. Prior to joining Innerscope, he created brain-plasticity-based training programs, validating those programs using neuropsychology, neuroimaging and electrophysiology. Randall also served as an assistant professor in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and received his doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley. Randall shares his home with his wife, children and a cat named Zoë.

Jeannine has 20+ years of experience in developing new markets for news and media organizations including Bloomberg, Greater Media, CBS and Viacom. She began her career working for the Bloomberg organization and continued her career as the Director of Strategic Partnerships for the new business divisions of Greater Media, (radio) CBS and Viacom (multi-media) creating integrated multi-platform marketing and advertising programs that were often used a model for corporate programs. She graduated with a BA from the University of St. Louis and studied as a concert pianist at Bradley University.
She was nominated for an Advertising Research Foundation Great Mind Award in 2013, receiving honorable mention. Jeannine shares her home with her husband, her son, lots of extended family, several birds and two dogs.

Bill is an industry veteran with experience in a number of leading marketing, media and advertising research organizations. Immediately prior to joining Innerscope, Bill was president of knowledge collaborations at Nielsen and built their Media Analytics business. Previously, he was chief executive officer of Media Behavior Institute through the piloting of USA TouchPoints, a founding partner of Sequent Partners, and president of the Marketing Science Institute. He is a former president and chief executive officer of ASI Market Research, which he and ASI’s investors sold to Ipsos to become Ipsos-ASI, and former president of BASES, which was subsequently acquired by Nielsen. Joining Innerscope reflected Bill’s passion for leading our industry into the future: “The measurement of emotion is going mainstream in media, advertising and marketing research over the coming years, and I believe that Innerscope has the people as well as the technology to help achieve that for our clients.” He received dual bachelor’s degrees in management science and psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University, a Master’s in Business Administration from the Wharton School, and a doctorate in marketing from Harvard Business School. Appropriately, Bill notes the emotional component of being Innerscope’s chief executive officer: his youngest daughter is a newly-minted doctor who will be moving to a Boston-area hospital, and they are delighted to be living closer together.

As a co-founder of Innerscope, Brian drives clients and colleagues to push their thinking beyond the limits of what is known, including the limits of traditional marketing research. “As an expert who is intimately familiar with our technology, I often step in as a storyteller,” says Brian. “If you ask a person a question, you get an answer. If you measure someone’s emotion, you get something a little more unusual. I help clients become experts at emotion and I help make understanding emotion as easy as understanding an answer to someone’s question.” Brian received his Bachelor of Arts in design from the University of Wisconsin and his Master’s in Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he split his time between Sloan and the MIT Media Lab. His Media Lab project involved the use of multiplatform sensing technology in media research. This project was co-directed by Dr. Carl Marci and became a major inspiration for the founding of Innerscope Research.

Although I have worked for more than 20 years in marketing research, one factor has become very clear to me in the past three years: Advertisers are thirsting not just for data on advertising performance, but on the bigger picture — on why advertising does or does not work. No matter how thorough the ad research, one truth continues to assert itself in the work that I have done: very often people don’t really know what it is specifically about an ad that excites or dissuades their interest.

My advantage in that regard, I think, is that I have been fortunate enough to have run the gamut from the first advertising research firm in the world, Starch Communications, to (currently) the state-of-the-art firm in neuroscience consumer research, Innerscope Research. What has been most fascinating is to see where the two approaches (survey research and biometric) both intersect and diverge.

My primary goal in my work is to employ and honor the research — but to move beyond the data to help my clients understand the extraordinary (and often unconscious) dynamics that generate interest and engagement with advertising. And the work that Innerscope Research has been doing, has catapulted our understanding of what works and does not in advertising.

Patti is a creative leader and entrepreneur with a strong reputation to innovate, motivate and drive change in digital and social consumer experience, media insights and measurement and women’s professional growth.

INNOVATE: Patti pioneered and set the vision and strategy for a new Global Media Insights research function, the global launch of a social media listening and engagement tool, the development and implementation of a digital measurement framework and cross media best practices.

MOTIVATE: Patti is energized and collaborative with strong leadership skills to create, manage and motivate high-performance, cross-functional global teams to consistently over deliver Strategic Understanding Plans.

Patti coaches, inspires and empowers women of all ages to have the confidence and skills to stand up and stand out on their quest to build their professional jungle gym.

DRIVE CHANGE: Patti is invested in moving market research from data reporting to predictive, insight driven storytelling that delivers business results. She is relentless about research experimentation across paid / owned / earned platforms and establishing a preferred list of cross-media and emerging research suppliers.