by Introducing emography to create a multi-dimensional view of customers
Anywhere Real Estate’s Chief Marketing Officer Esther-Mireya Tejeda is presenting the keynote speech at Qual360 North America 2024. In this interview Esther-Mireya shares innovative strategies in consumer insights and marketing, highlighting the crucial role of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in leadership. She advocates for moving beyond traditional demographic and psychographic models to adopt ’emographics,’ a technique that probes into customers’ emotional and psychological profiles for deeper behavioral insights. This method enriches brand positioning and strategic planning.
Esther-Mireya Tejeda is the Chief Marketing Officer at Anywhere Real Estate and a recognized transformation strategist known for stewarding brands through the complex challenges of today’s tech-driven marketplace. With two decades of experience spanning lifestyle, media and entertainment, Tejeda is known for her unique blend of innovation, strategy, and operational acumen coupled with a people-first approach to leadership. She is pioneering neuroscientific methodologies to build customer insights that center on subconscious emotions – a first for the industry and for marketers overall. Prior to Anywhere, Tejeda was a growth catalyst at organizations like SoundExchange, Entercom/CBS Radio, Univision, PepsiCo, and Diageo.
QUAL360: Without giving too much away – what is the core message of your keynote and what would you like delegates to remember?
Esther-Mireya Tejeda: The way marketers have traditionally approached segmented persona-building is flat and one-dimensional, leaving out many important details around the motivation and behaviors of customers. Our current research modalities tell us who our customers are and what they do, but fail to answer why they want it. Through emography, a new tool I’m introducing in marketing, we can model a 360 degree, multi-dimensional view of our customers and truly understand the complexity, nuance, and diversity in today’s fragmented world.
QUAL360: What motivates you to join the Qual360 NA conference, and what are your expectations?
Esther-Mireya Tejeda: I believe in the fundamental role of research as the backbone of everything we do in the business world. Research, data, and insights collectively are the most powerful tools to understand a business, its customers, and how to make the relationship between them successful.
I hope to share innovative approaches to market research with a diverse group of professionals to enhance their practice – and also walk away with new tools and insights to implement in my own work.
QUAL360: You have talked a lot about the new frontier of consumer insights, tell us more about this.
Esther-Mireya Tejeda: We need to move beyond tried-and-true demographics and psychographics and embrace ’emographics,’ – the codified way of measuring the unconscious emotional and psychological make-up of customers that explains why they do what they do. This deeper degree of insight can impact every facet of the business, including brand positioning, product development, strategic planning, and communications across all touchpoints, including timing, media placement, and customer care.
QUAL360: How do we tie these foundational insights to business impact?
Esther-Mireya Tejeda: Implementing precision marketing strategies is the first step we take to tie these foundational insights to business impact. By understanding our customers better, we can target them more accurately, maximizing our resources and avoiding wasteful spending. More importantly, these insights do not just empower marketing; they fuel the entire customer journey. To fully leverage their potential, these insights should be incorporated across all business functions. From branding and product development to strategy, PR, and creative initiatives, these insights serve to optimize every aspect of our business, ensuring a comprehensive impact on commercial goals.
QUAL360: From the vantage point of a CMO, what is an effective working method to action consumer insights and champion the voice of the consumer across your teams?
Esther-Mireya Tejeda: CMOs need to make sure the function is aligned with the overall business agenda and the revenue and commercial goals of the organization. Marketing is a lever that should be used to drive business strategy. As CMOs, we’re in a unique seat in the C-suite, being the only ones who deeply understand the customer who is buying our product or service. We are the voice of the customer, and we bring a unique perspective to the table when it comes to defining goals and crafting business strategy.
To fuel effective collaboration, I focus on data and facts, while driving towards that shared vision for the business. That alignment allows for easier collaboration because it’s logical, and we’re all guided by a unified understanding of business goals.
QUAL360: Apart from work, what should delegates talk to you about at Qual360 NA – do you have any particular personal interests, hobbies or extracurricular activities and engagements?
Esther-Mireya Tejeda: I am a champion for DEI in everything I do, and I work towards building diverse pipelines for the future generation of leaders in business. I sit on the advisory council for the East Harlem Tutorial Program in NYC and I am active on the alumni council for Prep for Prep, also in NYC. As a trained pianist and music lover, I spend a lot of time attending shows and concerts with my husband and sometimes our young daughter, too.
QUAL360: Thank you very much Esther-Mireya. We look forward to hearing more at Qual360 2024!
If you would like to hear more about emography as a new tool for qualitative research, check out the upcoming Qual360 North America edition on March 13&14 in Washington.D.C. Speakers represent leading agencies and international clients from Amazon, Mars, Novartis, Gallup, Sago, Nestle, J.P. Morgan, Knit, Universal, Expedia, Catalyx, Bose and many more. 
