This fall marks the 30th year in print for Quirk’s Marketing Research Review. While we celebrated our 25th year in 2011 with a bit more pomp and circumstance (25-year markers are generally more momentous than your garden-variety five- or 10-year mileposts) another five years in business is nothing to sneeze at, especially for a media company!
After all, we are still in business – unlike many media companies – and while we’re certainly feeling the effects of the changing publishing landscape, I’m happy to report that we are doing just fine, thanks to the enduring support of readers like you and the research companies who market their products and services across our many outlets.
We’re also celebrating 20 years online. By the time you read this, the first iteration of the redesigned Quirks.com will be up and running after many, many months of construction. It’s a brand new platform that gives us a solid base to build upon. At its core is a smarter search function, designed to make it easier for you to find and access all of our content, from our directories to our jobs section to our storehouse of nearly 6,000 articles.
Back when we were reviewing several older stories in conjunction with our 25th anniversary issue, I was proud of how well they had held up. Granted, that piece on fax-based surveying from the May 1996 issue may have lost a little of its relevance (ahem) but in general, while the methods and tools to have evolved, the main tasks of marketing research haven’t changed. Thus our online article archive remains as valuable as ever (and still free of charge) – and is now even more readily accessible.
A big shout-out to Dan Quirk and Ralene Miller for their hard work on the new site. We can now see that all of the hours they spent in meetings and trading e-mails and phone calls with the Web design firm and in testing and re-testing all the various features and functionalities have finally paid off. The site is still a work in progress but if anyone can get it to where it needs to be, it’s Dan and Ralene.
Speaking of Dan, he related a story to me that neatly encapsulates everything we’ve tried to do here since the first issue debuted in 1986. Dan was recently out for drinks with a group of friends and was introduced by a mutual friend to a woman who had worked in marketing research for a long time before switching careers a few years ago. His pal introduced Dan to her as “Dan QUIRK, you know, of Quirk’s!” hoping, as only a really good friend would, that she would register a blank stare. Instead, much to his friend’s chagrin, the woman proceeded to gush about how much she loved Quirk’s and how the Quirk’s brand was so well-respected and stood for quality. Dan thanked her profusely and told her how his dad Tom had founded the magazine after stints in the publishing and marketing research industries with the goal of promoting the value and understanding of MR in all its forms through helpful, practical articles. She was amazed to find out the firm is based here in the Twin Cities and has a staff of just 11 and also pleased that Quirk’s had entered the event space in 2015.
I’m proud to say that her reaction is not uncommon. Tom’s approach to serving the industry was always based on delivering personal customer service. And as a business owner himself, he knew the value of being flexible with the independently-owned MR firms that formed the bulk of the early Quirk’s advertisers. He also knew that the audience would quickly tire of reading empty puff pieces of the type that were (and still are!) so common in trade publications so he always stressed the need for us to deliver substantive, independent editorial content.
Those values, along with being nimble, creative and responsive, have sustained Quirk’s for these past 30 years and I’m confident they’ll see us through the upcoming decades as well.