The third quarter was a busy one for Nucleus and saw a tremendous return to face-to-face insights work. In August alone, we conducted something like 15 qualitative groups, which included a trip to Minneapolis. In this busy month, we did some card sorting and some shelf display work that just isn’t the same in a virtual setting. Aside from the observations on the topics themselves, another observation was that America is ready to chat face-to-face again. Me too.
One of the most interesting things to happen in Q3 was hearing from some old friends. We have had a few great interns over the years and one from 2014 reached out over the summer. Now in a client-side role, she had a project where they needed some fresh thinking and asked us to submit a proposal. We did and turned around one of our most interesting projects of the year so far. Not to be outdone, we also had a client that had hired us for a project in 2015 contact us again, wanting to expand and repeat that previous engagement. It was great to hear from them and we are in the midst of that project now. However, someone else had them both beat. We had last worked for another local client in 2008 (not a typo) and they too came back to us in Q3 for a new project which is, at the time of this email, right at the finish line.
To end the quarter, several of the team hit the road for the Insights Association regional conference in Las Vegas, which included some great speakers and some memorable meals. There was the dinner where I accidentally knocked into a restaurant server and sent some French fries flying all over the table. Then there was the breakfast with one of our Las Vegas-based clients where we saw pro golfer John Daly. I guess if this is the craziest that things got in Las Vegas, things stayed pretty tame.
Along the way, we quietly hit the 17 year mark for the company. I’m very grateful that we’ve gotten this far and we couldn’t have done it without a great team, great clients and great suppliers.
