CASRO

Honesty, proactive communication, and deliverables that make them look like heroes, are among the things research executives at major corporations seek in their relationships with agencies. Among the other key attributes in building strong bonds, according to speakers at CASRO’s Client Conference, June 3-4 in New York, is the ability to solve problems in unique ways and a capacity to distill complex data sets into practical action items.

What can agencies do for clients? asked James Masterson, Senior Vice President, Marketing Research and Business Intelligence, Worldwide Medicines Group, at Bristol-Myers Squibb. In a nutshell: Take care of your business (excellence in design, execution and efficiency); understand my business (the market, the trends, the players, differentiation) and discover insights not data. “When I get research results I’m going to ask, ‘What does it mean to our business and how can we act upon this information,’” he said. “You need to pass the ‘so what’ test.”

Bill Friedrich, Senior Director of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, noted that agencies need to think more like a strategic partner by asking questions like: What decisions are faced? What do you already know? What do you need to know? and how tight an answer is needed? Also helpful: providing an interpretive report and an executive summary that tells the story.

In detailing a successful case study, Jeffrey Mercer, Director of Market Research at Microsoft Corporation, observed that agencies may succeed by spending more time in collaboration with a client’s Business Group on strategic planning of key initiatives.
Agencies must be prepared, he said, to provide more dynamic insights and richer knowledge, be able to address the “whys,” “related to what” and “what has changed” issues and develop a library of knowledge that can be mined to address changing business needs.

At Microsoft, buy-in accelerated thanks to a communication plan designed to proactively share research results in a variety of ways and demonstrate the return on the research investment. The initiative includes monthly research & insights meetings and a monthly research newsletter highlighting completed and upcoming research projects and analyses.

Michael Matza, Senior Vice President at Washington Mutual, discussed the bank’s Voice of the Customer and Loyalty System (VOC), which utilizes customer insights to identify and drive improved processes. The system, he explained, enables WaMu to prioritize performance improvement actions based on what will have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Among the other benefits is the ability of branch staff to access data to compare and evaluate performance across business lines and business units and to benchmark WaMu performance with competitors.

Wayne McCullough, founder of Intelligent Data Mining and formerly with DaimlerChrysler, Ford, Bank One and IBM, advised that agencies would be wise to focus on specific areas of specialization to better provide the consultative expertise that clients demand. Deep analytic and methodological expertise is expected, he noted, considering client research staffs have declined in number and talent. Also, internal purchasing organizations want fewer relationships.

The impact on client-agency expectations from the reduction of client research staffs was noted often throughout the conference. The drop in research experience has placed more pressure on their relationships with agencies. But the need for agency expertise is actually an opportunity if done effectively, presenters noted.

Sharon Warden, Vice President of Research and Planning for the National Association of Broadcasters, urged research agencies to enact improvements in data quality based on feedback from clients and stated that improvements in quality must be communicated to clients so they realize the benefit and the investment being made.

Other client executives participating were James Moseley, Senior Vice President, Consumer Planning & Research, Diageo NA, John Forsyth, Partner, McKinsey & Company, Bryan Maach, Vice President, Market Research & Analysis, Cisco Systems, Inc., and Lincoln E. Wood, Marketing Research Analyst, Southern Company

Special thanks to Conference Chair, Tyler McMullen, Senior Vice President at MarketVision Research and event sponsors Opinion Outpost/Western Wats and Decipher.

	Bill Friedrich, Senior Director of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals	Wayne McCullough, founder of Intelligent Data Mining (left) and Michael Matza, Senior Vice President at Washington Mutual.
James Masterson, Senior Vice President, Marketing Research and Business Intelligence, Worldwide Medicines Group, at Bristol-Myers Squibb

	James Moseley, Senior Vice President, Consumer Planning & Research, Diageo NA	Bryan Maach, Vice President, Market Research & Analysis, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Sharon Warden, Vice President of Research and Planning for the National Association of Broadcasters


Conference Chair, Tyler McMullen, Senior Vice President at MarketVision Research