News notes
Sir Martin Sorrell has stepped down as CEO of ad giant WPP. Roberto Quarta, chairman of WPP, becomes executive chairman until the appointment of a new CEO. Mark Read, CEO of Wunderman and WPP Digital, and Andrew Scott, WPP corporate development director and COO, Europe, have been appointed as joint COOs of WPP. Sorrell will be available to assist with the transition. A previously announced investigation into an allegation of misconduct against Sorrell has concluded. The allegation “did not involve amounts that are material,” the company said in a statement.
Branded Research Inc., San Diego, announced its compliance with GDPR practices.
Reston, Va.-based market research firm comScore has received renewed certifications from the Trustworthy Accountability Group’s Certified Against Piracy program for its efforts to eliminate piracy and fraud.
Canadian loyalty rewards program Aeroplan issued an apology and cancelled an online member survey after reports that the survey included controversial social questions. “We apologize to any members who were offended by the questions in the survey,” said Christa Poole, senior manager of external communications for Aimia, which owns Aeroplan, in an e-mail to CTV News.
RG+A (Roger Green + Associates Inc.), a New Hope, Pa., health care marketing research firm, announced that it has discontinued its corporate Facebook page. “Facebook’s lack of transparency about use and collection of data clashes with our values and creates practical concerns in protecting individuals’ data,” said Roger Green, president/CEO of RG+A in a press release. “As a result, we are shutting down the company’s Facebook page.”
Tufts University, Medford, Mass., has announced a new data science major in the School of Engineering, to become available fall 2018.
Acquisitions/transactions
Beaverton, Ore., apparel company NIKE has acquired Zodiac Inc., a consumer data analytics firm based in New York City and Philadelphia, accelerating its consumer direct offense strategy.
Canada-based CRC Research has acquired Toronto qualitative research firm Consumer Vision from Canadian research firm Leger.
Atlanta research firm Focus Pointe Global announced the acquisition of the San Francisco operations of watchLAB, a qualitative research company. WatchLAB will retain its Chicago business operations.
Chicago-based insights firm SPINS has acquired FoodFacts Inc., a consumer awareness platform for transparency into nutrition data, ingredients, allergens and sensitivities.
Los Angeles-based research firm LRW announced it has completed the acquisition of research firm Kelton Global.
Alliances/strategic partnerships
New York-based Nielsen and Del Monte Foods Inc., San Francisco, have expanded a multi-year information and services relationship.
Russia-based research firm Mediascope and Manchester, England software company RealityMine announced the continuation of their partnership for a further three years. For the past five years, RealityMine’s RealityMeter product has enabled Mediascope, formerly TNS Russia, to measure mobile media consumption across Android and iOS in the Russian Federation. The data collected from RealityMeter is part of Mediascope’s WEB-Index, an online measurement product for the media industry.
Santa Monica, Calif.-based entertainment company Activision Blizzard has entered a deal with researcher Nielsen to value the company’s e-sports ventures. The partnership will focus on the Overwatch League and Overwatch Contenders, with the goal of making the value of advertising with Activision Blizzard’s e-sports ventures more clear to potential investors and advertisers.
Nielsen and CGA Strategy Ltd., through their Nielsen CGA joint venture, have launched Check-Level Insights Pool (CLIP) data, which will provide transaction-level insights around sales performance in both chain and independent bars and restaurants across the U.S. beverage alcohol market.
Reston, Va.-based comScore has partnered with Transform Inc. to launch Local News Intelligence, a data-driven analysis service which allows local TV stations to understand the factors that drive local news audiences and create viewer engagement across platforms.
Restaurant consulting firms King-Casey, Westport, Conn., and Tampa-based Revenue Management Solutions announced that they are working together to help restaurant brands optimize their menu strategies. For certain clients, King-Casey and Revenue Management Solutions (RMS) are combining their approaches: King-Casey specializes in conducting and analyzing in-depth research of customer attitudes and behaviors, while RMS focuses on utilizing point-of-sales data to analyze customer purchasing behavior.
Nielsen and CNN jointly announced an expanded relationship that will provide daily national television measurement to CNN en Español, the 24-hour Spanish-language news network in the U.S
Association/organization news
Julia Eisenberg, vice president of insights at Nashville, Tenn.-based 20|20 Research, has been elected to serve as a director at large for the Insights Association Southwest Chapter.
The American Marketing Association (AMA) has inducted Stanford Graduate School of Business market research pioneer V. “Seenu” Srinivasan as a 2018 Fellow and established a new award for rising-star scholars in his name. The annual V. “Seenu” Srinivasan Young Scholar Award in Quantitative Methodology is named in honor of Srinivasan, best known for his work on conjoint analysis, and is intended to encourage and reward research on new quantitative and empirical methodologies of interest to both academics and marketers. Young scholars are eligible if they have received a doctoral degree in marketing or a related field no more than six years prior.
Awards/rankings
Burbank, Calif., research firm ThinkNow won a 2018 ARF David Ogilvy Award for Excellence in Advertising Research for Covered California’s “Life Can Change in an Instant” advertising campaign created by Campbell Ewald. The campaign won a Bronze award in the Changing Consumer Behavior category that honors insights that helped brands stay ahead of category shifts and guided evolution to new utilization. Covered California is a state health insurance exchange.
New accounts/projects
Research firm MRSS India will conduct the ACI-ASQ survey at 20 airports in India for a period of three years (2018-20). As one of its initiatives, the Airport Authority of India has been participating in the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) survey conducted by Airports Council International (ACI) in order to get feedback from passengers on various service parameters rendered by airports and also get the Authority’s airports benchmarked with other participants in ACI-ASQ survey worldwide.
Bend, Ore.-based Ventana Research has launched its newest research into business and technological transformations in corporate offices of finance. This research will continue previous research initiatives into the extent to which CFOs and finance departments are moving to a more strategic role in management of the company through use of technology. It will identify, explore and quantify aspects of the future of the office of finance, including the finance department’s mandate within the organization; how well or poorly it is performing and why; the challenges it faces; and the role of people, processes, information and software in addressing those challenges.
New companies/new divisions/relocations/expansions
Adam Rossow, Gary Zucker and Jonathan Futa have launched the Denver-based firm Threadline Digital to offer a content marketing measurement solution that leverages a blend of market research and ad tech to demonstrate how content made consumers feel, the impression it left and its effect on the brand.
Arkansas Business reports that Conway, Ark.-based information firm Acxiom is consolidating two divisions and cutting 2 percent of its workforce (the company now has around 3,300 employees worldwide).
YouGov, a U.K.-based data and analytics firm, has opened offices in Spain and Italy.
Researcher Lightspeed announced the opening of its first local office in Seoul, South Korea.
Research company Euromonitor International has opened a Hong Kong subsidiary.
Research company Fieldwork has opened its latest facility, Fieldwork New York City. Located to service midtown Manhattan, it is close to Penn Station and multiple transportation lines. It includes three focus group suites, each with skyline views, and a window-wrapped open creative space. One room is designed to accommodate over 50 respondents.
Cincinnati research firm Burke, Inc. is adding a new building to its seven-acre downtown Cincinnati campus that will become home to its subsidiary, Seed Strategy. Burke acquired Seed Strategy, a growth acceleration firm currently located in Crestview Hills, Ky., in 2014.
Research company earnings/financial news
ITWP, parent holding-company of Toluna and Harris Interactive Europe, announced growth and momentum of the Insights on Demand Consortium it established in January 2018. Since the consortium’s founding, insights and marketing professionals representing consumer brands across a range of industries and geographies have joined.
U.K.-based research firm Join the Dots announced 2017 end-of-year revenue as £12.3m, marking the company’s fifth consecutive year of over 20 percent year-on-year growth. The agency recently welcomed Chief Financial Officer Pauline Reeves to the business.
YouGov reported that pretax profit for the first half of fiscal 2018 jumped 78 percent due to strong organic revenue growth. For the six months ended Jan. 31, the polling company made a profit of 4.5 million pounds ($6.4 million) compared with GBP2.5 million in the same period a year earlier. Revenue increased 10 percent, or 12 percent on a constant-currency basis, to GBP56.3 million from GBP51.4 million. Chief Executive Stephan Shakespeare said business in the second half of the financial year has continued positively and the company is confident in its prospects for the full year.
New York software firm Remesh announced a $10 million Series A funding round led by General Catalyst with participation from Seed Round lead investor LionBird Ventures.
Oslo, Norway-based research software and services firm Confirmit reported highlights from its 2017 business year, including securing a record number of new customers in 2017, achieving double-digit growth in the Asia-Pacific market last year and recording its largest-ever sales quarter in 2017’s fourth quarter.
Q1 2018 revenue increased year over year by nearly 60 percent for P2Sample, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based sampling firm. In the same period, survey completes grew comparably, registering more than 2.1 million in Q1. This growth was supported in part by the addition of 11 new staff members over the past year, primarily at the company’s headquarters.
The board of directors of Nielsen Holdings plc approved an increase in the company’s quarterly cash dividend of $0.01 to $0.35 per common share, payable on or after June 20, 2018 to stockholders of record at the close of business on June 6, 2018.