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Niels Schillewaert

Head of Research and Methodologies

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BelgiumBased in Belgium

In one line

Former ESOMAR president, co-founder of Human8

Goes deep on

  • Methodology
  • AI ethnography
  • Research standards

Niels Schillewaert co-founded one of the world’s largest research consultancies, led the industry’s global association, and now sets the methodology behind every Conveo study.

Niels holds a PhD in applied economics from Ghent University and is adjunct professor of marketing at Vlerick Business School, where he directed the master’s in marketing for five years. In 1997 he co-founded InSites Consulting, which grew into Human8: ten entities, more than nine hundred people, and work for Coca-Cola, AB InBev, JDE and Coty among others. He oversaw its expansion into the United States and stepped back from the managing partnership in 2024.

He served on the ESOMAR council from 2010 and as its president in 2017 and 2018. His research has won ESOMAR’s best paper award, been published in Industrial Marketing Management and in Quirk’s, and in 2026 the industry voted him one of the Insight250 Legends.

At Conveo he pressure-tests every feature against real research practice before it ships. He writes The Prompt, a column on Greenbook, on what AI changes in insights: from the economics of always-on customer understanding to a study of ninety-one in-home dishwashing ethnographies run by an AI moderator, which he has presented at Quirk’s in Dallas and London. He led Conveo’s AI shopper study across eight markets and speaks at TMRE, IIeX and the ESOMAR Congress.

His advice to teams getting started is the same on stage and on camera: pick a business problem, think big, start small, scale fast.

Further reading

Read the interview in full

Transcribed from the film and lightly edited for length and clarity. Click a timestamp to hear that answer.

As markets today are rapidly evolving and changing, we need to continuously measure what's going on. We need to understand people in their natural context.

First of all, what AI does, it quantifies deep human understanding. If you're having continuous conversations with consumers, with people in their natural habitat, AI allows you to quantify that unstructured information in a heartbeat.

Secondly, AI allows you to compound knowledge, meaning that every study that you do makes the whole ecosystem smarter. So every study builds one on top of the other and you build learnings continuously.

We know how trackers are using surveys and they give you the what and the quantitative description, but they don't give you the why. So imagine you can measure brand health and monitor that over time in an unstructured way, in a natural way. You will see patterns emerge. You will see, for example, when an insurgent brand pops up and disrupts an industry.

So the way you get started is really to look at a business challenge that you have. If that's innovation or whether that's brand health monitoring or whether it's a shift in consumption patterns, pick a challenge, pick a problem, and start with that. It's probably good to think big, start small, and then scale fast so you can learn.

The music is in the markets. That's also where cultural differences lay. AI is also able to bring those cultural differences to the surface. Once you get going, things can go really fast.

With Conveo's AI you can make a lot of video reels and you can bring that into the boardroom, because that's what sticks in a boardroom: when a consumer says something and testifies about something going well or something going wrong. That's really what sticks and has an impact on management decision making.

So basically what it does, it allows you to continuously discover what's going on in a market. It allows you to detect signals early, and early enough that you can still act upon it. It helps you understand your consumers so that you as a company, as a brand, can act upon it better than anyone else.

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Writing

By Niels.

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On conveo.ai

Elsewhere

Getting to know Niels.

Niels Schillewaert on set at the Conveo off-site in Cascais
MethodologyNiels sets the method behind every Conveo study and pressure-tests each feature against real research practice.
Niels Schillewaert on set at the Conveo off-site in Cascais
AI ethnographyHis dishwashing study ran 91 in-home AI ethnographies. The same method is on the platform.
Niels Schillewaert on set at the Conveo off-site in Cascais
Always-on researchHe makes the case for continuous customer understanding. StoryLines is how clients run it.
Niels Schillewaert on set at the Conveo off-site in Cascais
Brand healthTrackers give you the what. His argument, and Conveo’s, is that interviews give you the why.
Niels Schillewaert on set at the Conveo off-site in Cascais
Into the boardroomReels of consumers in their own words, cut from the interviews, are what sticks with management.

“Pick a challenge, pick a problem, and start with that. Think big, start small, and then scale fast so you can learn.”

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