If In-Person Work Matters, Why Isn’t In-Person Listening Funded?

Fresh off the Pharma Market Research Conference PMRC conference, it was hard to miss the dominant theme: AI everywhere, all the time. Presentation after presentation focused on how machine learning can accelerate analysis, retrieve insights faster, and synthesize massive datasets with unprecedented speed. Much of this work is exciting -- and necessary. We’re doing it ourselves at ThinkGen through ThinkAEI.

But amid all the enthusiasm, one foundational question didn’t get sufficient airtime: What kind of data are we feeding these models?

If AI is informed by qualitative inputs -- especially in rare/orphan diseases -- then the rigor, depth, and context of how that qualitative data is collected matters more than ever. Speed does not compensate for shallowness. Scale does not fix distortion.

And yes, this brings me -- once again -- back to Deep Customer Listening. I’ve written about it before, and I’ll keep writing about it, because no amount of technological progress has diminished its importance.

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Virtual Research Works. But It’s Not the Whole Story.

Let me be clear: this is not an argument against virtual/remote research. I personally still conduct two to three interviews a day using platforms like Civicom and Forsta. These tools have transformed access. They allow us to recruit across geographies, move quickly, and operate within increasingly constrained budgets.

Virtual qualitative research has real, tangible benefits:

• Broader respondent pools
• Lower costs
• Faster turnaround
• Easier scheduling

All of that matters in today’s environment.

But something important has been lost along the way. At PMRC, conversations with long-tenured colleagues -- people who remember how this work used to be done -- kept circling back to that loss.

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What We Lost When We Left the Facility

Anyone who’s read my work has heard this before. I’ve been unapologetically consistent on this point. I learned this craft in a research world that brought customers into purpose-built facilities like Schlesinger, Focus Pointe, and Fieldwork: where respondents were undistracted, unhurried, and engaged for an hour or more. The dialogue moved deliberately. Ideas were challenged, refined, and deepened.

Behind the one-way mirror, marketing teams watched everything: tone of voice, pauses, posture, facial expressions, attire, energy shifts.

That context mattered.

Equally important was the back room: the spontaneous, real-time conversation amongst marketers, researchers, copywriters, creatives, and agency strategists reacting to what they were seeing together. The back room was (and still is) a crucible of insight and creativity. Brainstorming didn’t wait for a deck. It happened live.

Today, we rarely give teams that shared experience.

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If In-Person Work Matters…Why Wouldn’t In-Person Listening?

Over lunch at PMRC, Mary Dominiecki, an experienced researcher and moderator, made a brilliant observation that deserves more attention. Many emerging marketing researchers in biopharma have never been in a research facility. They’ve never observed live, in-person qualitative research. And without that exposure, they can’t fully appreciate the difference it makes.

At the same time, many pharma and biotech companies are mandating that employees return to centralized offices. The logic is clear: being in-person matters. Collaboration improves. Culture strengthens. Learning accelerates.

If we believe that logic applies internally, why wouldn’t it apply externally?

If presence matters with employees, shouldn’t it matter with customers?

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Maybe the Problem Is the Name (Half Kidding)

I joked with Mary that perhaps in-person research needs a rebrand. “Marketing research facilities” isn’t exactly language that sparks excitement, or loosens budget strings. It has all the appeal of a fax machine.

What if we framed it differently?

What if facilities became Customer Vibe Centers? What if in-person qualitative research was repositioned as "vibing with the customer?

It’s tongue-in-cheek—but the underlying point is serious. We need to reassert the value of immersive, human, high-fidelity listening in an era increasingly dominated by automation.

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The Future Is Hybrid -- But Only If We’re Intentional

Virtual research isn’t going away. Nor should it. But if we allow convenience and cost alone to dictate our methods, we risk training our AI -- and our organizations -- on thinner and thinner human truth.

Deep Customer Listening isn’t nostalgic. It’s strategic.

And sometimes, the most advanced move we can make is to sit across from a customer, look them in the eye, and really listen.