Transforming legendary public opinion firm Harris Poll
As CEO of Harris Poll since 2017, Will Johnson ’08 MBA is leading one of the country’s most-storied research firms into its next chapter. Founded more than 60 years ago by JFK’s pollster Louis Harris, the firm today is expanding its capabilities in AI and software-as-a-service (SaaS) under Johnson’s leadership as it looks ahead to the next six decades and beyond.
A Chicago native, Johnson graduated from the Two-Year MBA Program and frequently writes commentaries about public opinion and issues impacting Chicago and the nation for Chicago Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business as well as national news sites such as Fortune, USA Today and Ad Age. He and his wife, alumna Katherine DellaMaria ’08 MBA, an investment officer for the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois, are raising their two sons Teddy and Jack in the Chicago area.
Born in 1979, Johnson has always straddled the line between Gen Xers and Millennials. In fact, his interest in polling goes back to his undergrad years at Lafayette College, where his senior thesis examined how political parties could attract millennials to their campaigns by using non-conventional techniques in their advertising. That experience sparked his fascination with data and led him to Young & Rubicam, a global advertising agency where he worked until coming to Kellogg.
Johnson credits Kellogg for making him an industry-agnostic leader. “Kellogg graduates are nimble and curious and we’re always learning,” he says. “Those qualities are a cornerstone of my role today. It’s been really valuable because, at Harris Poll, we’re experts in data collection and research, and we serve business leaders across lots of industries. Kellogg also gave me an understanding that it’s all about the team, and about how you collaborate to leverage your strengths and offset your weaknesses.”
Johnson says Kellogg’s MBA program also has given him the ability to combine hard data with human nature. “On the one hand, we have a foundation that’s grounded in rigor, evidence and confidence in the data we’re collecting. But that’s only half of what allows people to make good decisions,” he says. “You also have to understand the human truths, and that means being a student of culture and being able to communicate that data in a way people can understand — it’s storytelling.”
After finishing his MBA, Johnson returned to Young & Rubicam in 2008, as chief strategist of a database called BrandAsset Valuator, which was the world’s largest study of brands and consumer/brand behavior. His role was to analyze data for clients, providing them with informed insights so they could adroitly position themselves and their messaging. The academic rigor of Kellogg and the agility it imparted in synthesizing both the “left brain” and the “right brain” prepared Johnson to blend the creativity of advertising with math, statistics and data.
“It was at Kellogg that I really learned that without good data, decision-makers are flying blind,” Johnson says. “If you have good data underpinning what you’re doing, that gives you permission to be more creative, and you can really feel confident and comfortable going out and making big decisions. That always appealed to me.”
Johnson was promoted in 2015 to president of BAV Consulting, where his continued pioneering with data-driven brand platforms helped triple revenue. In this time, he also developed a regular column and contributed to books like “The Brand Bubble” and the New York Times bestselling “The Athena Doctrine.” In addition, he built and launched the Best Countries Index in partnership with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which he presented to the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016.
Johnson became CEO of Harris Poll in 2017. By then, the firm had moved far beyond political polling and into research and analytics to discover and track public sentiment, behaviors and motivations. He spent his first years transforming the company’s product and service mix to emphasize advice on top of insights. Now he’s leading the firm’s transformation into a SaaS business based on market research.
“We know, like every business, that AI is going to play a huge role in where we’re going,” Johnson says. “So we’re launching a suite of AI-based research products that will provide the marketplace fast, actionable tools that will help leaders make decisions in real time and run their businesses better. The SaaS component — whether it’s tracking how your brand is performing, or asking real-time questions of your consumers — is about speed and efficiency. That’s the forward edge of where we’re going.”
Johnson notes, however, that Harris will always rely on people — its research practitioners and seasoned professionals, with their passion and knowledge for interpreting data and communicating insights back to clients.
“For easy problems that clients need to solve, we’re creating those efficient AI-enabled tools,” he says. “But for the hard questions, Harris is the place where CEOs, CMOs and world leaders can go and know they’re getting a real person who understands the market and can help them make good decisions for their business.”
Johnson is eager to share how much his time at Kellogg influenced his respect for balancing the quantitative with the qualitative aspects of running a company, especially at one whose success relies so much on hard data and emerging the insights that come from it.
“As much as I value the data we glean from our polls, narrative matters, too — whether you’re talking about a fast-food company or a nationwide retailer, people have stories about their experiences with well-known companies,” Johnson concludes. “And it’s those stories that guide their buying behavior and what they tell others. Beyond gathering those insights, you’ve got to be able to communicate it in a simple, clear way so that business and political leaders can act on it.”
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