Carol Cunningham ’87, vice president of consumer insights and business strategy analytics at BET, will visit the Newhouse School on Tuesday, Nov. 1. Her talk, “Blerds, Bleeks & Blirks: Understanding Multicultural Influencers & Trendsetters,” will be a discussion about research and consumer insights on those who know what’s hot, what’s next and what matters. She will speak at 6:30 p.m. in the I3 Center, 432 Newhouse 3.
Carol Cunningham
After more than two decades of research experience, Cunningham joined BET Networks’ corporate market research team in 2007. Her responsibilities include leading the charge on all consumer insights, trend spotting, questionnaire design and primary analysis for all qualitative and quantitative studies. She designed several seminal studies, including “African Americans Revealed,” “Reel Facts—Everything You Wanted to Know about African American Movie-goers and Streaming Media,” “Inside the African American Millennial Mind” and “Brand Love 2015.”
Cunningham previously served as head of strategic research for Scripps Interactive (HGTV, Food Network, GAC, DIY and Fine Living), where she worked on all aspects of brand and media engagement, emerging technologies and streaming media, as well as custom research special projects.
She also led all affiliate strategic initiatives for A&E Television Networks and ESPN, and served as head of research for Univision, Fox and NBCUniversal affiliate stations. In addition, she served as director of syndication research for MGM United Artists.
She has been honored with a 2013 MAAX Award for Research Executive of the Year and a 2015 Next Generation Market Research Disruptive Innovator Award (Individual Achievement). The Newhouse School honored her last year at the 50th anniversary gala, 50Forward.
Her talk is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Betsy Feeley at 315.443.7401 or eafeeley@syr.edu.
