Research: Synovate pips Nielsen at the post

After nipping at the heels of The Nielsen Company for the past two years, Synovate has pulled the rug from the research giant to claim the title as Hong Kong’s most preferred research partner.

Last year, competition between the top two firms was fierce and this year was no exception. Synovate, however managed to overtake Nielsen by a margin of 3%.

In this current economic climate where brands are pouring more money into making sure they better understand their consumers, the role of research in the marketing sector is increasing exponentially.

Synovate has been striving to cement its position in the local market, making a concerted effort to strengthen its digital business, improving its data and delivery services and web-based solutions that can be accessed by clients in a variety of manners.

Locally Synovate boasts a strong network of employees and research professionals. In Hong Kong the company has 256 full time employees, 131 research professionals, 187 full time interviewers and a further 350 part-timers.

This bodes well for the Synovate’s Media Atlas Hong Kong project, which continues to market research agencies be a critical tool for marketers to understand local consumers’ attitudes, thoughts on advertising and new products as well as measuring their spending power.

This year has also seen some big management changes. In January Jill Telford, Synovate CEO for Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea, relocated to London as CEO for its UK operation, with Brendan Shair taking the role of Hong Kong managing director.

Just recently the global leadership of Synovate was overhauled and the company is now expecting to go through a period of renewed change Robert Philpott, a Synovate executive since 1996, has taken over as global CEO of Synovate, replacing Adrian Chedore who recently retired.

With many local businesses forced to shrink their budget during these hard times, the growing China market has been a focus for Synovate, where it expanded its computer-assisted telephone interviewing capability from 60 to more than 800 stations across the vast country.

“China remains critical to Synovate, we have tripled in size over the past six years in China and we continue to invest in our access panel.” The outgoing Chedore told Marketing.

Although losing its number one spot, The Nielsen Company remains one the largest market intelligence provider on a number of fronts. After selling its Hong Kong Advertising Monitoring service to local competitor admanGo, Nielsen has also taken a strong focus on the digital sector.

Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, was selected by Tvb.com as the broadcaster’s exclusive partner for in-depth tracking and analysis of more than a hundred tvb.com channels.

In third place is Taylor Nelson Sofres, this year the focus for many, following its aggressive takeover from advertising giant WPP. Many changes have taken place at TNS since the takeover, including the merge of TNS’ Custom Division with another WPP-owned company Research International.

The merger saw Research International folded into TNS Custom Division to create the world’s largest custom research company.

Aside from the very large global research firms, it’s encouraging to see Hong Kong-based companies admanGo and Cimigo holding their own in the top ten chart.

Top Agency: Synovate
Owned by: Aegis
Headed by: Brendan Shair, managing director
Last year: 2