Erin Core.
Our Industry Profile takes a look at some of the professionals working across the advertising, adtech, marketing and media sector in Australia. It aims to shed light on the varying roles and companies across the buzzing industry.
Erin Core: Managing director at Veracity Research
Time in current role/time at the company:
Five years.
How would you describe what the company does?
We’re a research consultancy that helps organisations make better decisions around marketing, product, sales and growth - especially when things feel a bit unclear. We span the gap between market research and consulting, bringing rigorous research and strategic (yet practical) thinking together so teams can work out what to do next (without the big, heavy report that nobody reads).
What do you do day to day?
A bit of everything - project work, research design, client chats, team leadership, project management… and the less glamorous bits like managing suppliers, systems and finance. But mostly it’s thinking really hard: connecting dots, simplifying, and helping people decide what to do next.
Define your job in one word:
Sensemaking.
I got into the industry because:
I came from creative strategy and wanted to get upstream - because not every advertising brief is actually an advertising problem. Research felt like a better way to get closer to real behaviour and influence the decisions behind marketing and growth.
What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role?
Scaling without losing quality. We’ve grown slowly on purpose, so the work stays senior-led and genuinely useful. It also means we’re still a bit of a “best kept secret”… which is great for our clients, and mildly annoying for our visibility.
What’s the biggest industry-wide challenge you’d like to see tackled?
The biggest challenge is the way “data-led” has started to mean “decision-disabled”.
This massive obsession with more data, to the point where teams feel like they can’t make a call without another spreadsheet. Data matters (I promise), but it should support good judgement, not replace it. Often the answer is already there, it just hasn’t been joined up yet.
Who has been a great mentor to you and why?
Honestly, my husband! Across two decades, he’s taught me a lot about resilience, grit and sticking with things when they’re hard. He started a construction business around the same time I launched Veracity, so we’ve been learning the “scaling while staying sane” lesson in parallel, just in totally different industries.
Words of advice for someone wanting a job like yours?
Say yes to as much as you can. Science shows us that luck is mostly about saying yes to opportunities. And be nice to people. Reputation and relationships will carry you further than you realise.
If I wasn’t doing this for a living, I'd be:
Snowboarding every day, living in a small ski town, and inventing some crazy new product on the side.
My philosophy is:
Curiosity creates energy. You get out what you put in.
My favourite advert is:
P&G’s “Thanks Mom” Olympics series. Instant tears. Every time.
Music and TV streaming habits: what do you subscribe to?
Two ends of the energy spectrum: SoundCloud DJ sets for getting things done, ABC Classical for calm, and Kayo and Disney (ESPN) for switching off with sport.
Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?
If you sit near me, you probably know everything - I love a chat. But if you’ve just met me, you might not realise sport is basically my second job: CrossFit/Hyrox most days, snowboarding each year, kids in lots of sport… and plenty of F1 and NHL viewing squeezed in where we can. Also: my undergrad was a Bachelor of Applied Science, Sports Media, and I started out as a motorsport journalist - so yes, it’s a lifelong commitment.
In five years’ time, I'll be:
Teaching my youngest to drive a manual car - even though she may never use it. But I love the idea of learning the fundamentals, so you know it’s not just magic (or automatic).
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