NEWS16 July 2012

TNS names senior hires to new global qual practice

UK— TNS has made a series of senior hires as it builds a global qualitative research powerhouse under the leadership of Rebecca Wynberg, founder of Sadek Wynberg.

Wynberg (pictured) has been building up the team since joining the firm in December. Alongside chief operating officer Kristin Sharp, TNS has brought in William Landell-Mills from Ipsos Marketing as global research director, YouGov’s Arnie Miller as regional head of qual in Africa and the Middle East and Yellow Door founder Jo Adams as Australia head.

Other additions include Darren Bhattachary, who joins as a global research director from sister company TNS-BMRB, Ali Perry, who joined TNS a month before Wynberg as UK qual MD and Radhecka Roy, who comes to the firm from Synovate/Ipsos as regional qual client leader. Meanwhile, Alison Dexter is relocating from Vietnam to lead qual on the US east coast.

In an interview with Research, Wynberg promised more senior hires. She said: “At TNS, what I’m tasked to do is take qual and put it into the heart of the business, and the first place to start is to attract talent because qual is about people. Our tools are our brains. We’ve already got some really good people but we need to grow the talent pool.”

Wynberg estimates that within TNS there are already some 600 qualitative researchers and this number is set to rise. She wouldn’t disclose the size of the investment TNS is making in its qual team, but she says “the names speak for themselves” as does her board-level position.

“It makes a statement, inside and out, that we are serious about qual,” she says. “The opportunity in front of us – and what clients would really like – is to have scalable qual research.

“Clients are getting more global; they don’t want to mess around with six different suppliers on the same project. And they would like excellence done for them at scale. So we feel that if we can get the right people in place with the right strategy and with the right approaches, we can do what nobody else has done before: grow a scaled qualitative business.”