Q&A with the 2025 Marketing Research Supplier of the Year (2024 revenue below $5 million) award winner, Werk Insight
Editor’s note: Nik Werk is the winner of the 2025 Marketing Research Supplier of the Year (2024 revenue below $5 million) award, a category in the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards. The award winners were announced during a virtual celebration on November 19, 2025. To learn more about the awards, visit https://www.quirksawards.com/.
Werk Insight was named as the 2025 winner of the Market Research Supplier of the Year (2024 revenue below $5 million) award during the Marketing Research and Insight Excellence Awards virtual celebration.
The Marketing Research Supplier of the Year award is given to a marketing research and insight firm making outstanding contributions to the success of brands. Werk Insight does this through quality data. The organization was founded to combat unvalidated online surveys, creating bad quality data and ultimately leading to a higher risk of failure.
Nik Werk, managing director and founder of Werk Insight, attributes this award not only to employees at Werk but also to the company’s clients.
“We couldn’t have achieved this without an excellent team of committed and experienced B2B market researchers, and clients who are both willing and able to ask critical questions to get better insights,” Werk said.
How does Werk Insight define quality data in today’s B2B research environment?
The primary quality issue we’re facing in the B2B market research industry is respondent validation. Almost all quantitative data is collected through online panels today, meaning that research agencies have no idea who is really taking their surveys. There is no way to validate that the person taking the survey is who they claim to be, never mind that they are the right type of decision maker.
With AI, it is increasingly easy for fraudsters to circumvent security checks and imitate experts online. Until the pervasive data quality issues in online panels are resolved, our view is that B2B researchers should only use Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing or video interviews.
The respondent’s identity is verified face-to-face using ID, or the meeting invitation is sent to a business email address. This approach adds an extra layer of certainty that the person answering the questions is a real expert.
What do you believe will have the biggest influence on the marketing research industry over the next two years?
It’s not AI, though that will continue to transform our industry.
I believe that we’re at an inflection point in how data is collected in our industry. Of late, there are more voices in our industry willing to discuss how little agencies know about who they’re collecting data from.
I think most clients would be surprised to learn that almost all quantitative surveys are entirely outsourced from agencies to panels, who themselves outsource data collection to third parties. In most instances, the respondent makes less than $1 from a 15-minute survey, yet agencies claim that these are qualified senior B2B decision makers.
Agencies and panels are trying to distract from this issue with increasingly advanced solutions to prevent fraud and bots. None of those initiatives address the actual issue of respondent validation. Getting better at spotting bad data to remove does nothing to validate the data that remains.
We’ve been a prominent voice in this, but by no means the only one. This year, the Insights Association shone a spotlight on this issue, and well-known people in our industry are starting to share, “how the sausage is made”. I think it will be untenable for agencies to keep turning a blind eye to this.
What was a major factor in Werk’s success in such a short time period?
We’re careful to only take on projects that are a strong fit for us. We’re honest with clients about what is feasible and what is not.
For example, we have competitors who are much better at advanced ethnography or know parts of the health care industry much better than we do. In those cases, we don’t throw our hat in the ring.
Only pursuing opportunities that match our expertise has enabled us to consistently deliver work of the highest standard to our clients. We’re particularly strong in construction, manufacturing, tech and professional/financial services – industries with complex terminology, complex value-chains and hard-to-reach decision-makers.
For small agencies, choice is a gift, and maintaining the ability to say “no,” as difficult as it can be, is key to our success. We’ve grown through word of mouth and referrals by sticking to this principle.
Beyond that, we’re laser-focused on making sure that we understand the ins and outs of our clients’ industries, so that we can make sure the insights are clear and applicable.