‘A reckoning for the research industry’: 5D’s Lyndall Spooner on AI and the shallow data spiral

As marketers embrace AI tools and social listening at scale, a quiet crisis is unfolding in the background - one that threatens the quality of consumer insight itself.

After years of collecting “more and more” data, much of it from social media, Lyndall Spooner, founder and CEO of research company 5D, argues the research industry is heading for a reckoning, as the hunger for data fuels what she calls a “shallow data spiral.”

At stake is the credibility of decision-making, the evolving role of the CMO and our understanding of how humans really behave in a tech-driven world.

“In the last 10 years, a lot of companies have dined out on data,” Spooner told Marketing-Interactive. “They’ll scrape all this data from social media and say, ‘The more you've got, the smarter your company is.’ It’s bullshit. What you're doing is just collecting lots of shitty data.”

This shallow data spiral has created a veneer of customer understanding - fast, surface-level feedback loops that prioritise volume over substance.

More is more? Nope. “We’ve dumbed everything down,” Spooner says.

Science, not sentiment

5D’s response has been to double down on science.

Spooner, a molecular biologist turned marketing strategist, leads a team of statisticians, behavioural scientists and developers. Together, they draw on cognitive science, pulling together multiple data streams - some proprietary, some third-party - and enriching them through APIs and machine learning models.

But the secret, she argues, isn’t just smarter tech. It’s knowing what to ask.

“People think anyone can do research. But real research is a science. It takes clever design to extract insight, not just surface-level sentiment. If you ask the obvious question, you’ll get the obvious answer. That’s not understanding human behaviour.”

Part of the problem, she adds, is the overreliance on AI without proper training or curation of data.

“AI doesn’t know good from bad. It just learns from what it’s fed. If you’re feeding it a pile of crap, you’re going to get a bigger pile of crap. Garbage in, garbage out. It's really simple.”

The blunt assessment comes as 5D repositions itself amid a broader re-evaluation of how market research is conducted in the age of AI. Formerly known as Fifth Dimension, the firm rebranded to 5D to sharpen its focus on cognitive science, behavioural modelling and custom-built tech that helps decode how real people make real decisions.

Spooner is not alone in this concern. Privacy laws are evolving. CMOs are grappling with fast-changing consumer expectations. And trust in traditional sentiment-tracking tools is eroding - a fact brought into sharp relief during recent political campaigns and brand crises.

The bigger issue, Spooner argues, is that research has lost its scientific grounding.

“We’re not being smart and clever about what we’re doing with data,” she said.

“There used to be rigour - peer-reviewed studies, psychological frameworks, clever research design. Now we just fire off one-question surveys and hope AI will do the rest.”

The CMO’s expanded role

Far from being diminished by AI, Spooner believes the CMO’s role is more vital - and more expansive - than ever. No longer just brand stewards, marketers must lead the entire organisation in rethinking how it understands customers, connects data points, and responds to shifting behaviours.

“The CMO has to take the company on a journey,” she said. “Underneath the CMO is the insights team, the analytics function, the voice of customer programs, everything that tells you what the market expects and what it will take to be competitive.”

But there is a growing disconnect.

“We all agree that tech has changed. But what most don’t realise is how much people have changed. The way we think, shop, relate to brands, it’s all different now. Traditional marketing models don’t reflect that.”

This behavioural shift is being driven by platforms, algorithms and the increasing dominance of transactional interactions over emotional relationships with brands. Spooner cites 5D research into consumer psychology that shows declining levels of goal-setting, decision-making confidence and long-term planning among younger consumers.

“Younger generations are more pessimistic, more apathetic and more likely to let technology tell them what to do. This has huge implications for how we design experiences, measure engagement and build loyalty.”

Rather than reject AI, Spooner says the industry needs to reframe how it’s used. AI should be treated as an assistant, not the answer. It can store knowledge, surface patterns and scale information retrieval, but only if trained on meaningful, high-quality inputs.

At 5D, Spooner and her team are building AI-enabled “intelligence hubs” that actively manage curated datasets, link APIs to behavioural models, and train agents to surface insights based on scientifically grounded research.

“We don’t just scrape content off the internet. We ask better questions. We combine methodologies. We enrich data with context. And then we build tools that help people interrogate that data meaningfully,” she said.

That includes building guardrails for how staff, particularly younger analysts raised in digital-first environments, are trained to interact with insights platforms.

“You have to teach people how to ask good questions. How to interrogate findings. How to have conversations, even.”

As AI becomes more embedded in marketing workflows, Spooner wants to see more CMOs push for long-term strategies, stronger research design and a recommitment to understanding what truly drives human behaviour.

“If you want sustained growth, margin and meaningful brand strategy, it starts with good data - not just big data,” she said. “We’ve spent too long dumbing it down.

“It’s time to get smart again.”