MIZZOURI
231 Public Square
Suite 200
Franklin TN 37064
P: +1 615.988.4774
F: +1 615.807.3811
E: show.me@mizzouri.com
W: www.mizzouri.com
the usual suspects
© Copyright 2023 Mizzouri. All Rights Reserved.
Getting the answers you need to make business decisions should not be as slow, unreliable, or expensive as it is now. At Mizzouri, we’re proud members of Generation Flux — and we clearly see a market research industry that’s in desperate need of fresh new thinking. We’ve turned normal on its head. We’ve explored new business models and technologies (not to mention opportunities to disintermediate on your behalf). And we’ve created something truly disruptive in the process.
You can have brilliant and actionable research with global scale, incredibly fast speeds, and prices far below current market standards.
This is not about sacrificing quality.
Quite the contrary. At Mizzouri we’re smart about how we structure our business, how we leverage technology, how we produce our work, and how we assemble our team.
We launched Mizzouri to enable clients to commission the research they want – when they want it and the way they want to buy it. We give our clients the right information at the right time so they can make better business decisions, faster. We work with our clients, not for them.
And yes, we’re on a mission to disrupt the research industry.
Because the rules favour the industry, not the client. Because industry values are largely disconnected from clients’ needs. And, quite honestly, because this was an irresistible puzzle that we really wanted to solve.
After all, we've spent plenty of time on the client side - and nothing fuels disruptive innovation quite like frustration.
It was an unseasonably cold spring in London, England — and an unusually mild one in Nashville, Tennessee — when our three founding partners did something radical. They quit their jobs. They left Global COO, Board Director, and CFO roles with a mission to transform the market research industry because, quite frankly, they’d had enough.
Over the course of their careers they had all come to the conclusion that market research as it exists today should be staring extinction squarely in the eye. As former clients, they understood acutely how it feels to desperately need timely, accurate, and cost effective information to make business decisions. And after many years of asking, “why can’t we have that?” they came to a heady realization: the impossible isn’t impossible after all.
The ability to triangulate is a powerful thing when you’ve got an industry in your crosshairs. And these three like-minded dissidents have enjoyed a 360° view of market research while with firms such as Procter & Gamble, TNS, The Kroger Company, Ipsos, Price Waterhouse, Gloria Estéfan Enterprises, Chiquita, Kantar, and Reba McEntire’s Starstruck Entertainment. They have always espoused disruption when it benefits the consumer (which in this case is you, the client). And when it comes to research, they firmly believe you can have all three — great, fast, and inexpensive — when the business model is right.
Call them founders of the research logistics fan club.
It’s one thing to ask your day-to-day suppliers to change. To demand that an entire industry change is another thing altogether. It takes bravery for clients to demand change and, equally, it will take bravery to embrace a radically different market research business model. Are you willing to move as quickly as your intuition says you can? We hope so. You have business decisions to make.
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. And in today’s chaotic new business frontier, better mousetraps are popping up everywhere. In fact, no industry — let alone any company or brand — can afford to stand still.
We’re fascinated by disruptors. Those brave souls who’ve literally replaced industry incumbents, achieved hyper-growth, driven scale, leveraged new-to-the-world business models, cut out the middle man, and applied technology to fundamentally change the human experience.
We study them closely, and here are a few of our favourites.
What can we say? Amazon completely reframed our definition of retail. We love it that they started out focused on books and nailed that before creating a truly global marketplace. Actually, it’s hard to remember life without Amazon. We’re rabidly loyal. And who knows? They may save the US Postal Service while they pursue big ambitions for mobile payments and deliveries via drones. And the idea of turning London’s Underground ticket offices into click-and-collect pickup stations? Brilliant, we say.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. eBay gave us the ability to auction the shit we no longer find valuable to people who actually do, and they did it by using technology to bring the idea of collaborative consumption to the fore. Nasty Gal’s Sophia Amoruso is just one of scores of entrepreneurs who are grateful for the eBay launchpad. Which reminds us, we’ve got a snow blower that we never use any more, so if you’re interested…
Okay, maybe “cool” isn’t always enough to win top place in the market. But taking technology innovation and wrapping it in beautiful design so that it can go viral is brilliant. They have consistently created anticipation (and demand) by rationing new innovations. Apple taught us that simple is beautiful, and we all know that simple isn’t easy.
Though only around since 2008, these guys are well on their way to disrupting the global lodging industry. And the hospitality industry hates them (well, nearly as much as all those government agencies that rely on hospitality taxes). Their stats are nothing short of astounding: 9,000,000+ total guests, 34,000+ cities, 192 countries, 500,000+ listings worldwide, and if you’re counting, 600+ castles. Jeff Bezos, another one of our favourite disruptors, is an investor in this most prominent example of the Sharing Economy. They’ve used technology to reduce transaction costs, making sharing easier than ever. And they’re driving scale at a global level that no B&B (or VRBO for that matter) could ever dream of.
If we’re perfectly honest, what we really love about Kiva is that it takes capital away from the thugs corrupting so many geographies around the world. This microfinance marvel gives each of us the opportunity to change a life with a loan as small as $25. They’ve provided $519 million in loans so far (and counting) with a staggering 99.02% repayment rate. Grab a tissue if you plan to read a case study or two.
A brilliantly disruptive idea that put Blockbuster out of business – though at one point a strategic decision nearly cost them their entire customer base. But they turned it around and are in a fierce battle against competitors who are much more frightening than Blockbuster ever was: Amazon, iTunes, and others. Netflix is rare in that they’ve adapted their business model and leveraged new technology to drive customer value. We’ll be watching this space closely.
Forget that “Google it!” is an indispensible call to action. We love any disruptor whose mantra is to be completely transformative or, in short, to go enormous or go home. And the company’s Google[x] experimental wing is exploring space-age technology that could turn healthcare on its head. Everything Google does is about massive disruption (though we’d humbly suggest they stay open to the fact that just because it’s from Google it isn’t necessarily better). But even as we type that, we realize it usually is.
Not much to say here, really, except that Spotify is just the latest in a long string of participants in the very public disruption of the music industry. After all, none of us will ever think about the concept of a personal music collection the same way again. We wonder where this story will end. Just in case, we’re keeping our eye on the new Beats offer.
We can just imagine the dozens – if not hundreds – of telecon executives shedding tears, pounding fists, and gnashing teeth over the stats: 430 million active users globally and more than 50 billion messages each day (which, for the record, rivals SMS levels). And these boys from Yahoo remained firm about no advertising and no gimmicks, no matter what the competition did. They were clearly onto something, because Facebook bought them for a stunning $19 billion. As for their growth over the last five years? Mark Zuckerberg put it nicely: “No one in the history of the history of the world has done anything like that.”
What Amazon did for retail Etsy is doing to align business interests with social and environmental responsibility. Actually, scratch that. They’re giving brick and mortar, online, and mobile retailers a run for their money even as they become one of only 521 Certified B Corporations. No question they’re leveraging technology and disintermediation to change the way independent, creative artists and curators take their goods to market. But they’re also driving incredible scale with more than 1 million active sellers worldwide (hawking over 20 million items), more than 30 million registered members, and $895 million in sales in 2012. Not bad for a company that’s only been profitable since 2009 and in existence since 2005.
Hands down. These guys were the earliest and remain the best, most successful crowdsourcing engine on the planet – and they’ve continued to evolve and increase their level of sophistication since Day 1. As for us? We can barely resist the allure of a Producer credit.