Behind Every Big Idea, a Researcher Is Burning Midnight Oil

Every brand story you’ve ever loved started with someone hunched over a messy Excel sheet at 1:47 a.m.

Not the CMO. Not the agency’s “creative hotshot”. A market researcher.

And yet, if you look at how the industry treats researchers, it’s closer to backstage crew than co-writer of the play. This piece is about that gap - not “poor me”, but “what are we doing as an industry to the people who hold the customer’s truth in their hands?”

1. The invisible backbone of every “big idea”

If you shadowed a typical agency-side or supplier-side researcher for a month, you’d probably see:

Low starting pay and anaemic increments Entry-level “Market Research Executive” roles in India cluster around ₹3–5 lakh a year. Glassdoor puts the median at about ₹4.05 lakh, with most between ₹2.5–7.7 lakh.

Midnight oil as default, not exception Questionnaires rewritten at 11 p.m. because “global wants a few changes”; debrief decks stitched on weekends; 8 a.m. client calls after 3 a.m. tab checks.

Status: the “support function” In many large networks, ad folks and brand teams are the “heroes”; research is what you call after you’ve already decided what you want to do - to legitimise the decision you’ve emotionally taken anyway.

Ask any researcher who’s worked across advertising, aviation, FMCG or pharma and you’ll hear similar stories: “We drive the thinking, someone else takes the stage - and the bonus.” This isn’t just about hurt egos. It’s about a structural mispricing of a function that literally tells companies what their customers think, feel, buy, and abandon.

2. Follow the money: how underpaid is research, really?

Let’s take a hard, data-led look at where the market puts its money.

Entry - mid career: the “cheap but overused” phase

Market research analyst / exec (India): Glassdoor: Market Research Analyst in Mumbai - median ~₹6.95 lakh, with most between ~₹4.4–8.5 lakh. 6figr: Professionals “who know market research” earn ~₹21.7 lakh on average, but that’s across levels and includes people who have already climbed out of pure agency grunt work.

Marketing / brand peers: Brand Manager in India: average ~₹16.6 lakh, with most between ~₹9.3–26 lakh, top earners ~₹36 lakh. Marketing Manager: average ~₹13.1 lakh, with 75th percentile at ~₹21 lakh and top earners ~₹35 lakh.

So by mid-career, a typical brand or marketing manager is often making 1.5 - 2x what many agency-side researchers make, despite relying heavily on the latter for consumer understanding.

Senior leadership: still second fiddle

At the top, the gap gets bigger.

Head of Insights / VP–Insights (India): A career guide for insights professionals puts VP / Head of Insights in the ₹45–70 lakh+ band in India. Salary platforms show Insights Manager averages around ₹23.8 lakh, with top 10% crossing ~₹38 lakh; Consumer Insights Managers in India go up to ~₹33.5 lakh.

CMO / Marketing leadership: A CMO salary benchmark for India pegs typical ranges as: Early stage: ~₹9 lakh Mid-career: ~₹53.5 lakh Senior: ₹96 lakh+, with many in large firms well into crores.

Internationally, salary guides from markets like Australia show Heads of Insights at ~AUD 200k while CMOs/Marketing Directors comfortably sit at 350k+ – again, roughly a 1.6 - 1.7x ratio.

Now layer this on top of the macro picture:

The global insights industry is worth roughly $140+ billion, per ESOMAR’s Global Market Research/Insights reports.

Billions in value, and yet the people producing the thinking are often paid like extended vendors, not strategic partners.

3. “Support function” - how the industry quietly labels research

The salary gap is just the symptom. The real disease is how organisations frame the insights function. A few telling data points:

A Stravito summary of a large study found that around 80% of companies limit the Consumer Insights function to a narrow role - treating them as librarians or an internal information desk instead of a strategic business partner.

The WFA “Future of Insights” study notes that marketers tend to see insights teams as reactive, with a “micro view” of the business – good at answering questions, less involved in shaping the big ones.

In a Quirk’s “Q Report” on internal MR teams, one respondent summarised the paradox brutally:

“They say research is everything and the most important part of our business but they treat us as a support function.” quirks.com

A consumer insights leader quoted in an interview with Cloverpop reflected that, historically, market research was “a side-load operation… seen very much as a support function for marketing or sales.” cloverpop.com

Even when the rhetoric is “consumer at the heart”, the operating model is: “We’ve decided what we want to do. Can you quickly test this by Friday?”

That’s not partnership. That’s quality control.

4. The paradox: strategically critical, structurally undervalued

Here’s the real irony.

Every serious consulting, VC or strategy playbook will tell you:

Companies that deeply embed Voice of Customer (VoC) and insights into decision-making see stronger revenue growth and better CX outcomes. McKinsey case studies repeatedly tie systematic VoC programs to double-digit revenue uplift.

Private equity and growth investors explicitly frame market research as a growth lever, not a hygiene activity - using it to de-risk bets, prioritise markets, and refine propositions.

ESOMAR’s own narrative is that the insights sector is the “decision support engine” of a $142bn industry, covering everything from ad effectiveness and UX to product innovation and pricing.

In other words: The more uncertain the world gets, the more valuable good research becomes.

But we still:

Budget research like a line-item to be squeezed.

Staff it like ops.

Reward it like admin.

That’s the paradox every market researcher lives inside.

5. What this does to people (and to businesses)

On people

When a profession is structurally undervalued, a few predictable patterns emerge:

Burnout and cynicism Decades of “urgent” projects, last-minute briefs, and low increments create a culture where researchers either go numb or burn out.

Brain drain to client side / product / consulting / AI The best quant minds drift into analytics, product, or tech roles where pay and status are better aligned with impact. You see this in the rapid growth of data science and CXO-level “Chief Data / Analytics / Customer Officer” roles, while “Head of MR” often remains buried two levels below the C-suite.

Politics over craft When the only way to close the pay/status gap is to become “indispensable” to some senior stakeholder, you’ll inevitably see more sycophancy and less intellectual honesty.

On businesses

The cost to organisations is more subtle, but bigger:

Decisions get made on HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) and post-hoc validated by research.

Risky innovations go untested or are tested badly.

Customer understanding stays shallow – a few dashboards and NPS charts masquerading as “customer obsession”.

You can still grow like this, especially in a bull market. But you don’t build resilient businesses that way.

6. So what needs to change? (For CXOs and researchers)

If this article stops at “we’re underpaid and underloved”, it’ll just be a sophisticated rant. Let’s talk paths forward.

A. For CEOs / CMOs / Founders: change the frame

Stop calling it a support function Language matters. If you frame insights as “support”, you will unconsciously budget it like support and staff it like support.

Link insights to P&L, not just PPT Push your insights leaders to show – in money terms – how their work influenced pricing, churn, share, LTV. The moment you see a direct link between a segmentation or CX study and a revenue or margin outcome, the conversation around budgets and salaries changes.

Pay and position for impact If your CMO is at ₹1–2 crore and your Head of Insights is capped at ₹50–70 lakh while owning all consumer truth, you have a structural signal problem. Benchmarks already show this gap; closing it is a choice, not a law of nature.

Give Insights a true seat at the strategy table A growing body of industry commentary (WFA, ESOMAR, TMRE, etc.) is clear: when insights leads are in the room before the brief is written, businesses make smarter bets.

B. For researchers: from “question answerer” to “growth partner”

We can’t put everything on “the system”. The profession also needs to evolve.

Own the business question, not just the research design Don’t accept briefs at face value. Reframe them: “What business decision are we trying to make?” “What would you do differently if you knew the answer?” This is how you move from “survey vendor” to “thought partner”.

Speak fluent CFO Insights that don’t connect to revenue, cost, risk, or brand equity will always feel like cost. The Ipsos “Value of Insights” work is very clear: we must translate findings into clear financial or strategic implications to be taken seriously.

Over-invest in storytelling & influence Netflix’s former insights leaders and others repeatedly emphasise that the magic is not the data, but the way you tell the story and connect dots across the org. A mediocre insight, beautifully socialised, often beats a brilliant one buried in a 120-slide deck.

Draw boundaries with courage Saying “no” to bad briefs, impossible timelines or weaponised research is hard - especially in agency settings. But as long as we accept everything, we reinforce the idea that this is a low-value, infinitely stretchable service.

Collect our own case studies Every time your work avoids a bad launch, rescues a faltering campaign, or unlocks a new segment, document it. Internal case studies are your currency when you negotiate role, scope, and pay.

7. A thankless job - but it doesn’t have to stay that way

The market research profession has always attracted a certain kind of person:

Curious enough to keep asking “why?”

Nerdy enough to enjoy sample design and confidence intervals.

Empathetic enough to sit in a stranger’s living room and really listen.

These are not “support” traits. They are strategic assets in a world where customer behaviour is shifting faster than ever.

If you’re a CXO reading this:

Every bold marketing bet you make stands on the shoulders of some underpaid researcher’s 2 a.m. cross-tab.

If you’re a researcher reading this:

You are not “just” a vendor. You are the one person in the room whose full-time job is to represent reality. The job may have been thankless so far. The value never was.

This article is my small rebellion against that mismatch – and, hopefully, an invitation for the industry to correct it.