2015 Preview: What will success look like?

Colin Strong, head of industry, GfK: “Willingness to be nimble as our industry goes through huge disruption.”

Martin Filz, CEO, EMEA, Lightspeed GMI: “A stable growing economy and clients that truly get the need to design surveys for all devices.”

Andrew Wiseman, MD, ICM: “For agencies, looking at the broader marketing services sector to understand the opportunities for insight will be key to success. Wouldn’t it be nice for a ‘market research agency’ to win, or more fundamentally contribute to some of the more fashionable awards in the marketing communications space?  It’s time for market research agencies to show that they have a critical role to play in intelligently influencing brand decisions.”

Simon Lidington, founding partner and CEO, Big Sofa: “Having to open offices in North America and Asia to service so many global partners and clients.”

Ben Hogg, MD, EMEA – portfolio business, Research Now: “The continuing inclusion of technologies in research to ensure that clients are conducting research which tells them something new and surprises them, rather than carrying out research just to back up something they already believed was true. I’m looking forward to being shocked!”

Wander Meijer, COO, MRops: “Growing your business and contributing to a better world at the same time.”

Nigel Cover, VP, business services Europe, MaritzCX: “Success follows great customer experiences. Businesses that acknowledge that research, while an important aspect, is only one part of the journey to better customer experiences; speed, local action and customer resolution are all connected.”

Dan Hagen, chief strategy officer, Carat: “Fully integrated media ecosystems optimised and evaluated across bought, owned and earned channels. Realising the promise of emerging media technologies by integrating them together.”

Zakaria Haeri, research development lead, dunnhumby: “Consumer marketing and insight become an applied science of behavioural psychology.”

Christian Kurz, vice-president, research and insights, Viacom International: “I am under no delusions that measurement will be resolved by the end of the year, but all progress in the right direction will be much appreciated. We are also increasingly looking to smaller countries innovating in this space like Norway and Denmark and hope to see technological and methodological innovations to travel once they are proven.”

Elissa Moses, EVP, Ipsos Neuro & Behavioural Science Centre: “I went to a company Christmas party and the CEO got up and spoke with an exuberance I had never seen before. He said that the company had entered an entire new market and opened itself up to new customers. He said that 2015 was going to  be unlike any year prior, that all the hard work had lined up all the success factors and that they were ready to leap into a whole new world. That is what success looks like, no matter what the business is. It is the passion and conviction to create a new reality for a company, employees and customers – not in terms of profit per se but in terms of delivering new value to the marketplace.”

This is the final article in our series of 2015 previews. Happy new year, let’s hope 2015 is a good one.