How does a national drinkware brand headquartered in Oklahoma stay ahead of shifting consumer preferences in New York, Los Angeles and beyond? Simple Modern – one of America’s most popular drinkware brands, sold at Amazon, Target, Walmart and Whole Foods – has built its advantage by staying relentlessly close to its customers.
As AI proliferates across market research, teams face a critical question: Where does automation truly create leverage and where does human judgment remain essential? While AI can unlock unprecedented speed and scale, it also introduces new risks around data quality, trust, fraud and synthetic responses if applied without guardrails.
In this session, Chris Hoyle, CMO of Simple Modern, and Alfred Wahlforss, CEO of Listen Labs, share how they use AI-powered and human-led research together to inform personas, pricing and category innovation, while designing workflows that scale responsibly in 2026 and beyond.
Key takeaways
- The dos and don’ts that separate AI experimentation from durable impact.
- How Simple Modern turns early-stage ideas into successful launches using continuous customer feedback.
- When to deploy AI-moderated interviews vs. human-led studies and how to blend them.
- Practical guardrails for data quality, recruitment and governance.
- AI-enabled research wins you can ship this quarter.
