Today, my guest is Michael McCrary, Founder and CEO of PureSpectrum. Founded in 2015 PureSpectrum is a modern day technology firm that aims to be the AWS for empowering research automation. Prior to founding PureSpectrum, Michael helped pioneer both Cint as Managing Director and Lucid as President. Additionally, he served as SVP of North American sales for Greenfield Online.
CONTACT MICHAEL ONLINE:
LinkedIn
PureSpectrum
FIND US ONLINE:
www.happymr.com
Social Media: @happymrxp
LinkedIn
[00:00]
On episode 208 of the Happy Market Research Podcast, I’m chatting with Michael McCrary, founder and CEO of PureSpectrum. But first a word from our sponsor.
[00:09]
This episode is brought to you by G3 Translate. The G3 Translate team offers unparalleled expertise in foreign language translations for market researchers and insight professionals across the globe. Not only do they speak hundreds of languages, they are fluent in market research. For more information, please visit them at G3Translate.com.
[00:37]
Hi, I’m Jamin Brazil, and you’re listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. My guest today is Michael McCrary, CEO and founder of PureSpectrum. Founded in 2015, PureSpectrum is a modern-day technology firm that aims to be the AWS for empowering research automation. Prior to founding PureSpecturm, Michael helped pioneer both Cint as Managing Director and Lucid as President. Additionally, he served as SVP of North American sales for Greenfield Online. Michael, thanks very much for being on the Happy Market Research Podcast today.
[01:10]
It’s my pleasure. Happy to be here.
[01:12]
So, we’d like to start the podcast with an introduction of how you wound up in market research, right? Nobody starts their journey in kindergarten... “I want to be a market researcher.”
[01:27]
No, they don’t. [laughter] Interesting question. Before I got into this industry, I worked in publishing in New York City for a company called Meredith Corporation. And at Meredith Corporation, I had the responsibility of selling a magazine called Midwest Living. And being in New York City, the Midwest was thought of as the fly-over states. So I had to become pretty proficient in using data to support the ad sales initiatives. It was a beautiful magazine. People on the West Coast would know Sunset as its comp and Southern Living in the South and Yankee…
[02:10]
We had both, by the way, in our household.
[02:12]
Yeah, me too. So I knew data, and, oddly enough, I was connected to Keith Price and just outside of business. And that was the time when Greenfield Online had just sold its customer research business to TNS and was going to be focused exclusively on data collection sample.
[02:40]
So, what year is this? This is like ’99, 2000?
[02:43]
It’s after the dot.com bust. So it’s around 2002. And I’m in print magazine, and I can see the handwriting on the wall that this isn’t going to go well because you had advertising starting to take off online, but it was …
[03:01]
That was a tough time for print.
[03:02]
It was still actually good at that time because there was a lot of skepticism. If you go back to 2002, there was still... Television was still the big, dominant winner in ad dollars. Print was still pretty big. Now that looks very different today, but nobody really knew exactly what was going to transpire with online. There were a thousand different sites. This was before automation took place... the exchanges, and the platforms. Just a thousand calls from a thousand websites. So being in a big company like Meredith gave scale and leverage. So, I knew I wanted to do something online. And I was familiar with data, and it just so happened that Greenfield Online was hiring people to do sales. And I, obviously, had no idea what I was doing when I got there, but had great... You know, you think about the people who are on Greenfield Online. I’m very proud to say I’m part of the Greenfield Mafia.