New Zealand Marketers to be Boosted by Synovate Sponsorship
December 2009: Synovate New Zealand has signed a deal with the New Zealand Marketing Association (NZMA) to exclusively sponsor the NZMA Alumni.
The NZMA Alumni comprises the industry’s most influential and successful marketing professionals plus the most exciting emerging marketing talent in New Zealand. For this community of professionals the NZMA provides a range of specialist events, courses and communications in order to develop and promote the tools and skills New Zealand marketing professionals and business leaders need to be world-leading marketers.
“As a not-for-profit industry organisation the NZMA relies upon forward-thinking companies such as Synovate to enable our services to be delivered in an efficient manner. Given Synovate’s unequalled record in winning Market Research Effectiveness Awards they are an ideal partner for the NZMA as we seek to promote best practice.” says NZMA Chief Executive Sue McCarty.
Synovate’s NZ Managing Director Ian Mills says that “this partnership with the NZMA fits perfectly with our drive to reinvent research by engaging in thought-provoking, leading-edge thinking to actively help marketers improve their activities. By sponsoring the NZMA Alumni we can contribute to the industry in a highly effective way.”
“With Synovate having over 6000 staff in more than 60 countries, we also intend to bring some of the ideas of our global thought-leaders to New Zealand marketers over the coming year.” Mills added.
This exclusive sponsorship agreement takes immediate effect and commences with the 2009 Marketing Forum, to be held in Auckland and Wellington on the 7th and 8th December respectively. This prestigious, invitation-only, marketing event will provide top-level marketing professionals access to some of the latest marketing thinking from a range of distinguished global and local thought leaders.
There will be a number of thought-provoking events rolled out by the NZMA in 2010 as part of the Synovate Alumni sponsorship.
June 2009: Second Edition of Synovate's Global Recession Survey now released
Synovate, in conjunction with retail analysts Synovate Aztec, recently surveyed over 16,000 people in 26 countries, asking them about the current economic crisis. The survey was a repeat of a survey first conducted in November 2008, thereby allowing changes in people’s behaviours and attitudes to be tracked over time. New Zealanders were included in both these surveys, providing a rich insight into what New Zealanders are thinking and doing in the recession, and how we differ from the rest of the world. For further information, commentary, charts and more detailed results contact Synovate on +64 9 538 634.
Synovate Researchers Elected as Fellows of the Market Research Society of NZ
Recently both Ian Mills and Jonathan Dodd of Synovate Research have been elected as Fellows of the MRSNZ, the professional body of market researchers. Only 16 researchers in this country are currently Fellows, a title that reflects respect from senior research peers as well as an acknowledgement of professional standards, innovation and contribution to the wider research profession.
The Society's only Life Member, Duncan Stuart, had this to say:
"In the case of Ian Mills the nomination reflects years of highly professional standards of research as well as an extremely significant contribution to the profession through his work on the MRSNZ Committee – being the driver of the bi-annual Market Research Effectiveness Awards – one of the flagship events in an industry that otherwise (often for reasons of client project confidentiality) keeps a low profile. Ian’s work has helped raise the bar in this profession.
Jonathan Dodd’s nomination reflects also his reputation as a thoughtful often innovative researcher but also the contribution he has made over and above the call of duty towards his profession. Jonathan has earned a reputation as one of the noisiest players in research as a frequent speaker, (and best paper winner,) at industry conferences, as a regular columnist in NBR and through his previous stint as editor of the MRSNZ newsletter. Jonathan has again raised the profile of the profession as a whole."
Jonathan and Ian join other Synovate researchers Debra Hall and Hester Cooper as Fellows.
International market research company Synovate, in conjunction with retail analysts Synovate Aztec, recently surveyed over 12,000 people in 20 countries, asking them about the current economic crisis. 402 New Zealanders were included in the survey, providing a rich insight into what New Zealanders are thinking and doing in the recession, and how we differ from the rest of the world.
Headlines include the facts that...
Clearly, significant switching has occurred across a wide range of people and product types, and it’s not just the price tags that’s driving this. Aspects such as the ‘fairness’ of pricing, awareness of the relative quality of supermarket housebrand products, and a rebalancing of the budget all come into play.
Synovate New Zealand’s Executive Director Debra Hall says it’s all about understanding how consumers think about pricing:
“People don’t just think about the price. IF they think about it at all (and this is by no means certain) they may think ‘can I afford this’, or ‘is this a fair price for what it is’ or ‘is it good value’ or ‘am I willing to pay this much for this thing’… all these are different questions, leading to different results.”
Hall also adds that:
“Companies that will win in the recession will be those that have been able to build emotional bonds between their brands and their customers, as these brands are the least likely to be traded for something cheaper. Whether premium or value, in high or low interest categories, consumers will be willing to make other sacrifices to continue to buy these brands. Brands most at risk are those which have failed to differentiate, in markets where commodity options offer just about the same products, at much lower prices – hence the growth of private label supermarket goods.”
For further information, commentary, charts and more detailed results contact Synovate on +64 9 538 634.
December 2008: Synovate wins MRS David Winton Award for Innovation
LONDON – Leading global marketing intelligence company Synovate this week won the coveted Market Research Society David Winton award for Innovation in Methodology. Sponsored by TNS, the award was presented to Synovate for its paper, ‘A new measure of brand attitudinal equity based on the Zipf Distribution.’
Published in the International Journal of Marketing Research, the paper describes a new measure of attitudinal brand strength for use as a dependent variable in survey questionnaires. This new approach predicts share-of-wallet behaviour at the respondent level for all brands in a survey.
Commented Hofmeyr, International Director of Innovation for Synovate’s Brand and Communications practice, “The beauty of this forward looking measure is that it takes up very little questionnaire space, it correlates unbelievably strongly with aggregate market share and it’s easy to create segments and do conventional commitment modeling, or ‘defection/recruitment’ analysis. It is a new generation 'share of wallet' model, rather than an obsolete 'churn' model. We’re really pleased to receive this award.”
‘A new measure of brand attitudinal equity based on the Zipf distribution’ was published in the International Journal of Market Research (www.ijmr.com), Vol. 50, issue 2. A PDF copy of the paper can be downloaded here.
For further information on the attitudinal equity measure, please contact Debra Hall at our Auckland office, +64 9 538 0500.
November 2008: Synovate scoops the pool at the 2008 Market Research Effectiveness Awards
The 5th biennial NZ Market Research Effectiveness Awards were recently held at the Hilton Hotel. The awards are a major event in the market research and marketing industry, and drew entries from a large number and range of market research projects. Chief Judge (Professor Richard Brookes from the University of Auckland Business School) noted that this year’s entries were of a noticeably higher standard than in previous years.
This year Synovate New Zealand won more awards than any other company. These awards included the Supreme Award for a major qualitative brand study that explored brand positioning opportunities for Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and the Consumer Products Research Award for an advanced online survey of 1200 people, in 10 countries and 7 languages conducted for New Zealand based global pipfruit innovation company Prevar™ Limited.
Our Executive Director, Research, was recently a key interviewee on TVNZ 7's news hour.