Artificial intelligence is transforming the market research industry at an unprecedented pace. From survey analysis to synthetic data and predictive modeling, AI is making research faster, more scalable, and increasingly accessible.
If AI can analyze data, what becomes the role of the researcher?
In the latest episode of The New Mainstream Podcast, Mario Carrasco sits down with Vera Chien, a research and strategy leader with extensive experience in entertainment and consumer insights, to discuss how AI is reshaping the future of research and why human curiosity is becoming more valuable than ever.
Audience preferences in entertainment can change overnight. New platforms emerge. Cultural moments spread globally within hours. Success depends not only on understanding what people consume, but also why they connect with certain stories, creators, and experiences.
That constant evolution has made entertainment research an ideal testing ground for new approaches to audience intelligence.
As Vera explains, researchers working in entertainment have long combined quantitative data with cultural context, behavioral observation, and human interpretation, skills that remain essential even as AI becomes more sophisticated.
One of the most compelling themes from the conversation is that AI excels at identifying patterns, synthesizing information, and accelerating analysis. What it cannot do is replace the uniquely human ability to ask unexpected questions.
Technology can uncover trends.
Researchers determine which ones actually matter.
Ultimately, the conversation moves beyond the familiar debate about whether AI will replace market researchers.
A more important question is:
How can AI make researchers better?
By automating repetitive tasks, expanding analytical capabilities, and accelerating discovery, AI allows researchers to spend more time doing what they do best: understanding people.
And that's where the future of consumer insights is headed, not toward less human involvement, but toward more meaningful human intelligence.
In this episode of The New Mainstream Podcast, Mario Carrasco and Vera Chien explore these ideas and share practical perspectives on the future of audience intelligence.
Listen to the full episode to discover why the future of market research isn't about replacing human insight—it's about making it more powerful than ever.
For years, many organizations have approached multicultural marketing by asking who their audience is. Increasingly, however, the more important question is how people define themselves, experience representation, influence culture, and make decisions.
ThinkNow's latest Diversity OS report demonstrates that diversity is no longer simply a demographic characteristic to account for during campaign execution. Instead, it functions as the operating system shaping consumer behavior, brand perception, and purchasing decisions, particularly in markets like Los Angeles that often foreshadow broader national trends.
One of the clearest findings from the report is that consumers do not think about diversity the same way many marketers still do. Nearly seven in ten Los Angeles residents (69%) say everyday diversity best represents the city, while 67% believe brands should reflect that diversity in their advertising. These findings suggest that multiculturalism is no longer viewed as a niche audience strategy but as a baseline expectation for brands operating in diverse markets.
The report further shows that traditional marketing models often treat diversity as a downstream campaign decision through casting, language adaptation, or audience segmentation. ThinkNow’s diversity OS model, a market research framework designed to help businesses understand how modern consumers make choices based on consumer cultural background, identity, personal values and spending habits, positions diversity as market infrastructure that should inform consumer outreach strategies from research and creative development through media planning and customer.
The report also shows that while consumers expect brands to reflect diverse communities, they do not believe current advertising meets those expectations. Although 67% of respondents say diversity in advertising is important, only 37% feel Los Angeles is accurately represented in advertising and media. In what we document as a ‘representation gap,” we find that consumers are not simply asking to see more diverse faces. They want authentic portrayals of neighborhoods, families, languages, values, and everyday experiences. For organizations, accurate cultural representation means measuring cultural accuracy and credibility in advertising, not just diversity in visible representation.
Our report also further reinforces Los Angeles' role as a leading indicator for national consumer behavior. Sixty-five percent of Los Angeles residents agree that the city sets trends for the rest of the country. Respondents point to entertainment, food, fashion, sports, and neighborhood culture as major areas of influence. The implications of our findings point to more targeted efforts to connect with the communities where trends first emerge. Understanding local cultural signals can help brands anticipate broader shifts in consumer expectations before they spread nationally.
Perhaps the most practical finding in our report is that cultural relevance directly influences purchasing behavior. More than half of respondents (58%) say local authenticity matters when it comes to purchases and experiences. These trends are even higher among Black and Hispanic consumers. In this context, authenticity cannot be added at the end of a campaign. Instead, the data shows that it should shape research, messaging, partnerships, media strategy, and customer experience from the beginning, because consumers increasingly evaluate brands based on whether they demonstrate a genuine understanding of the communities they serve, not simply whether they acknowledge diversity.
Our diversity OS framework encourages organizations to rethink multicultural marketing as an ongoing strategic discipline rather than a campaign-level tactic. Overall, our findings highlight four interconnected drivers of consumer behavior: identity, representation, influence, and decision-making. Together, these dimensions provide a more comprehensive way to understand how consumers connect with brands in increasingly multicultural markets. As consumer expectations continue to evolve, organizations that build cultural intelligence into research, creative development, media planning, and customer experience will be better positioned to create messaging that feels relevant, credible, and authentic across the communities they hope to reach.
Download full report here.
Brands have spent years investing in segmentation, personalization, and multicultural marketing strategies. Today, consumer decisions are shaped by more than age, income, or geography. Identity, representation, cultural influence, and a sense of belonging all play a growing role in how people discover brands, interpret messages, and decide what to buy.
This is the foundation of Diversity OS, ThinkNow's new framework designed to help organizations better understand consumer behavior in multicultural markets.
Los Angeles is one of the most culturally diverse markets in the United States and has long served as an early indicator of trends that later spread across the country.
The research behind Diversity OS found that 69% of Los Angeles residents say the city's everyday diversity, expressed through its languages, culture, and food, best represents what Los Angeles stands for. This makes the city a valuable environment for understanding how consumer behavior continues to evolve.
The study also found that 65% believe Los Angeles sets trends for the rest of the country, reinforcing its role as a leading indicator for brands looking to anticipate cultural and market shifts.
Demographic segmentation remains valuable, but it provides only part of the picture.
Diversity OS introduces four interconnected dimensions that shape every consumer decision:
Identity: How people define themselves and how that identity influences their preferences.
Representation: How consumers perceive the way brands and media reflect their communities and lived experiences.
Influence: How ideas, behaviors, and cultural trends spread across different communities.
Decision: How authenticity and cultural relevance shape brand preference and purchasing decisions.
Together, these dimensions help explain why consumers with similar demographic profiles can respond very differently to the same campaign.
One of the study's most important findings is the gap between consumer expectations and their experiences with brands.
Sixty-seven percent of Los Angeles residents say it is important for brands to reflect the city's diversity in their advertising. Yet only 37% believe Los Angeles is accurately represented in advertising and media.
For brands, this gap represents an opportunity to build greater relevance, trust, and stronger connections with their audiences.
Understanding how identity, representation, and cultural influence interact enables organizations to develop more relevant strategies for increasingly diverse consumers.
More than a segmentation model, Diversity OS provides a practical framework for understanding the forces that drive consumer behavior and turning those insights into smarter business decisions.
Download the full framework and discover how Identity, Representation, Influence, and Decision are reshaping the future of consumer behavior.
For decades, brands have treated diversity as just another category within their marketing strategies. A segment to target, a specific audience to reach, or an additional variable within the broader market.
Today, that way of thinking is becoming outdated.
In Los Angeles, diversity influences how people build their identities, how cultural trends spread, and how consumers make decisions. It is not simply a characteristic of the market. It is the environment in which everything happens.
This is the central idea behind ThinkNow’s latest report, The Diversity OS: How Los Angeles Runs the Future of Consumer Behavior.
Los Angeles is one of the most diverse cities in the world and often serves as an early indicator of cultural shifts that later spread across the country.
ThinkNow’s research found that everyday diversity is the defining characteristic of the city. Elements such as language, food, communities, and shared cultural experiences carry more weight than many of the traditional associations people have with Los Angeles.
This makes the city more than just a local market.
To help brands better understand this reality, ThinkNow developed the Diversity OS framework.
The model explains how four key dimensions of consumer behavior interact:
Identity: How people define themselves across different cultural and social contexts.
Interaction: How communities connect, share experiences, and exchange cultural influence.
Influence: How ideas, behaviors, and trends spread across different groups.
Decision: How cultural relevance, representation, and belonging influence consumer choices.
Together, these four layers provide a more complete understanding of how multicultural markets operate today.
Today’s audiences are increasingly complex. People participate simultaneously in multiple communities, identities, and cultural spaces.
Brands that better understand these dynamics will be better positioned to create relevant messaging, build trust, and develop stronger connections with their audiences.
For organizations looking to understand where consumer behavior in the United States is headed next, Los Angeles offers a unique window into the future.
Explore the complete findings from The Diversity OS: How Los Angeles Runs the Future of Consumer Behavior and discover how identity, culture, and representation are transforming the way people connect with brands.
Download the report here.
In an increasingly polarized environment, brands are facing growing pressure to define what they stand for culturally and how they position themselves on social, political, and environmental issues. At the same time, consumer behavior has changed significantly, along with expectations toward the brands people support.
This was the central topic of a recent episode of The New Mainstream Podcast, hosted by Mario Carrasco, featuring Neil Callanan, founder of LooseGrip, an agency focused on purpose driven brands, advocacy, and cultural transformation.
According to Neil, the issue is not that brands participate in cultural or social conversations. The problem arises when they do so without a genuine connection to their corporate identity.
Today, many companies publish messages about diversity, inclusion, sustainability, or representation during moments such as Pride Month, Black History Month, or corporate responsibility campaigns. However, when these messages are not backed by real actions, consumers often perceive them as opportunistic branding efforts.
If a company claims to support a specific community or cause, it must be able to clearly explain how it does so, what resources it invests, what policies it implements, and what measurable impact those actions create.
Brands that build a strong identity around clear values often develop deeper relationships with consumers. This translates into stronger loyalty, differentiation, and emotional connection, all of which are especially valuable in highly saturated industries.
Examples discussed during the episode include Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, and Lush, companies that have integrated social and environmental causes into the core structure of their brand identity rather than treating them as temporary campaigns.
In these cases, purpose is not simply a communication tactic. It is reflected in organizational culture, product development, talent acquisition, customer experience, and long term business decisions.
Even when a values-based campaign does not generate an immediate sale, it can still create measurable indirect benefits for a brand, including:
In other words, purpose strengthens brand equity. In a market where products and services are becoming increasingly interchangeable, cultural relevance and identity have become powerful strategic assets.
The conversation also explores a less discussed aspect of purpose driven marketing: its impact on attracting and retaining talent.
According to Neil, companies with clearly defined values tend to attract more engaged and motivated employees. This can directly influence factors such as:
In highly competitive industries, purpose has also become an important employer branding tool.
Technology can optimize processes and reduce barriers to entry, but a brand’s cultural identity remains far more difficult to replicate. Elements such as trust, community, authenticity, and emotional connection continue to be deeply human competitive advantages.
Public agencies and nonprofit organizations are being asked to reach increasingly fragmented audiences while maintaining trust and participation across very different communities. ThinkNow’s latest voter insights report highlights several patterns that organizations should pay close attention to as they plan outreach and communication efforts.
Download the full report here.
One of the clearest trends in our report is the difference between consuming information and actively engaging with it. Nationally, 35% of voters reported watching political videos online, but only 24% participate in online discussions. Among independents, participation drops to just 16%, despite 29% reporting regular content consumption. We also found a noticeable participation gap among Latino voters. While 54% reported consuming political content online, only 34% reported actively engaging with that content. Overall, our report shows that communities may be seeing information without interacting with it, sharing it, or taking action afterward. Outreach strategies that rely heavily on passive digital exposure may therefore be overestimating actual engagement levels.
Our report also shows major differences in where people get information depending on age, language preference, and community background. In Georgia, 73% of younger voters reported relying primarily on social media for political information. At the same time, 54% of Black voters reported depending on local television. In Los Angeles County, Spanish-dominant Latino respondents reported especially high social media use at 70%, while local television remained influential among Latino audiences overall at 51%. Our findings show that communication preferences rmain highly segmented, particularly in multilingual communities and among audiences with different levels of political participation. These distinctions matter because many outreach campaigns still assume broad channel consistency across populations.
While media habits and participation levels varied widely across groups, economic concerns remain strikingly consistent. In Wisconsin, is the top major concern by 89% of Democrats, 83% of Republicans, and 77% of independents. Housing affordability also ranked among the top concerns across multiple demographic groups and regions.
Organizations working in public outreach, education, health, transportation, or community services should prioritize programs tied to affordability, economic stability, and practical day-to-day concerns.
Our report reinforces several challenges that government agencies and nonprofit organizations are already confronting: declining participation, fragmented media behavior, and growing difficulty measuring meaningful engagement. At the same time, the findings point to opportunities for more targeted communication strategies grounded in how communities consume information and what issues they prioritize most consistently.
Political campaigns and marketing teams often assume that reach equals impact. But new data from ThinkNow’s National & State Voter Report shows that voter behavior is far more complex. With over 8,000 respondents across key states, the findings reveal gaps between consumption and participation, highlight segmentation differences by audience, and uncover economic concerns that unite voters across party lines.
Download the full report here.
One of the most striking insights: 35% of voters watch political videos, but only 24% engage in online discussions. Among independents, the gap is even wider = 29% consume vs. 16% participate. Latino voters show high consumption (54%) but lower engagement (34%). For campaigns, this means impressions do not guarantee interaction. Strategies must account for passive audiences who consume content without taking action.
The reports show that different voter groups rely on different media channels:
Despite differences in media and engagement, one theme cuts across all demographics: inflation. In Wisconsin, concern is nearly universal = Democrats 89%, Republicans 83%, Independents 77%. Housing affordability also emerges as a shared priority. These issues provide rare opportunities for unifying messages that resonate across partisan divides.
The ThinkNow Voter Insights 2026 report is more than data — it is a roadmap. It shows where campaigns are overestimating engagement, where segmentation is essential, and which issues can unify diverse audiences. For marketing teams, these insights are the difference between wasted impressions and meaningful voter impact.
Download the full ThinkNow Voter Insights 2026 Report to access detailed state-by-state breakdowns, audience segmentation, and actionable recommendations for your campaign strategy.