Just as New Zealand’s advertising industry is world renowned, so too is the local
market research industry, routinely succeeding in the face of tight budgets,
big tasks and an ever-increasing need to do more with less. And the people and companies behind some of the industry’s recent achievements were acknowledged at the 7th biennial Market Research Effectiveness Awards at the Hilton last week, with Ipsos coming out on top as the supreme winner for the third time in a row.
Hosted by the NZ Market Research Society, the competition was especially tight this year, with almost 40 entries and a quality level that saw the judges commenting on just how hard it was to pick a winner in some categories. But it was Ipsos that came through on top of The Infotools-sponsored Supreme Award for its work into middle-aged blokes and their underwhelming levels of lifejacket usage for its client Maritime NZ. The research resulted in the ‘Don’t be a Clown’ campaign, and was cited by the judges as “a world class case study in demonstrating what great qualitative research and teamwork can deliver.”
While the names on the trophies from past awards may be different, it’s the same team, with the Ipsos team winning the Supreme Award under the Synovate
moniker in 2010 and in 2008 as Research Solutions. Who says only ad agencies get to change their names through sales and buy-outs?
The ‘Don’t be a clown’ project also won the Social and
Community Category, a win shared with Colmar Brunton for its work into ASB
Showground’s Royal Easter Show. It was an Ipsos sandwich for Colmar, with
another Ipsos project winning the category’s Gold-award for a project supporting
the NZ Blood Service’s ‘Save the Day’ campaign.
Ipsos also won the category close to many
StopPress readers’ hearts, with the Nine Rewards Media and Advertising Platinum
Award going to Ipsos’ work in redefining the design and content of the Herald on Sunday insert magazines. The
judges said this project “broke the mould for newspaper research, using a
combination of techniques and out-of-the-box thinking…and showed how research
can be insightful, accessible and interesting to use”.
Also keeping up with a winning tradition
was Frucor, winning (with
Futurescape Global) the Lion Consumer Products Platinum Award for the V Blue
launch research. Frucor also had a win with its Colmar Brunton project into
route customers, winning the Research Now Business To Business Platinum Award
with the judges saying that “this project epitomises how an effective
partnership between research company and client can make a significant
difference, not just to the client’s business, but also their way of doing
business”.
Colmar Brunton was hot on the heels of Ipsos, managing to wrestle the Rookie of the Year
award from Ipsos at last, with Marcus Wallace winning the award for being that
“extra special” rookie and standing out from the other nine entrants, including
finalists Alexandra Francis of Colmar Brunton and Philippa Gilbert and Steven
Gaston both of Ipsos.
Interestingly, the judges decided that none
of the entries for the Research Now Consumer Services Category were worthy of
the Platinum Award, but there were two golds handed out, one to The Research Agency
and ASB for Save the Change and the other to Nielsen and FMG for a renewed focus on
customer satisfaction and retention.
The last two categories were perhaps the
most hotly contested, considering how all entries were eligible. Firstly, the
Auckland Council Innovation Award went to the partnership of US-based Sensory
Logic with New Zealand’s TrueMotives and the in-house ANZ research team, for
its neuroscience-based advertising pre-testing work conducted with facial
coding analysis.
And lastly, the AMRO
Effective Partnerships Award went to Ipsos and AMI Insurance for the work done
by Ipsos through the worst of the Christchurch earthquake crises, work that
had to be conducted in a situation one will never find in a research or
marketing textbook.
