30Under30 Nominee: Dominic Prince

Great to hear from Global 30 Under 30 Nominee, Dominic Prince, who is a Lead Product Manager and Product Placement sector expert at the market research firm YouGov.

How did you get into the industry and reach this point?

I had always worked a lot with data, so joining YouGov early in my career to work with some of the world’s biggest sporting brands, assessing media values for them, was a bit of a no-brainer.

My work got in front of the right people at YouGov and I was asked to come across and work in the world of innovation. I was lucky to be afforded a lot of autonomy to develop and pursue new ideas. I published a couple of well-received research white papers and ran a PR campaign for a product I built that blew up and ended up getting over a billion impressions, which all culminated in the product having multiple Fortune 500 clients. Since then, I’ve been working on building some really cool solutions in the AdTech space for big brands and media agencies.

Why should someone consider a career in market research, data and insights?

I think there’s a lot of great people in the market research industry. People typically love what they do and are knowledgeable about it, which makes for a compelling workplace and for energising interactions with your clients. I’d also say that it’s an area currently undergoing a lot of innovation. This includes the recent opportunities unlocked by the advent of cheap and popular Large Language Models and the continued diversification of how data is collected from panellists. These make for a fast-paced, challenging work environment that I think offers the opportunity for a lot of impact.

Career paths are rarely without challenges. Can you share a moment from your career when things didn’t go to plan, but the lessons learned remain with you to this day?

I left a job in Finance because of burnout. It was a humbling experience that taught me the meaning of aligning work with purpose, and to always do things that you believe in and with colleagues you care about. Unfortunately, in our careers there will always be busier, more demanding times, but when the work feels like fun and you have a shared mission with others, it’s not as much of a problem.

What two things should junior researchers focus on as they progress in their careers?

This might be contrarian advice, but I would say try and focus on increasing your surface area more than trying to bury yourself away perfecting the tasks you’re doing as a junior. What do I mean by that?

I spent months in my first roles perfecting my excel spreadsheets and daily task runs. I thought this would be the thing that helped my career the most. After all, it was my job, right? Ultimately, the thing that got me my ‘break’ was taking an interest in someone else’s work and making an effort to understand them and ask them questions. They noticed my curiosity and my ability to synthesise problems, and that’s what got me the offer to go and work with them. My spreadsheets, nice as they were, didn’t help at all in my case.

So, by increasing your surface area, what I’m saying is that you should be curious, make time to follow new trends, connect with others and make sure that you’re the kind of person people would like to work with, i.e. polite, true to their word and empathetic.

Do you have any advice for our sector?

I think we need to become more sophisticated technologically. I think research, certainly in the areas that I’m working on where there’s a lot of focus on attribution and tracking outcomes from marketing activity, is becoming increasingly advanced. We need to think big about how to connect dots, how to house and enrich data, and what formats our clients want their insights in.

Is there anyone who has helped or supported you in your career who you’d like to acknowledge or thank?

To go chronologically, I’d like to thank Hamish Brocklebank, who took a chance on me when there probably wasn’t much reason to, and who encouraged me to think big and without limits. Then Alie Cirgenski for having my back and helping me take my ideas to market.

I’d also like to thank Brian Alexander, who has mentored me and given me encouragement that this area of building products is my niche, all while helping me to find and appreciate some of the values you can see in my answers above.

Also, a little shoutout to my two engineering leads, Max and Artur. Whilst being two of the most intelligent people I know, they are first and foremost the reason that I enjoy my work every day.