News notes
In September, Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business will begin offering a new product marketing and product management certificate program.
TRC Market Research, Philadelphia, celebrated its 30-year anniversary on April 1.
Qualitative research and branding consultancy Talking Business LLC, Newport Beach, Calif., led by founder Holly O’Neill, celebrated its 20-year anniversary in March.
Acquisitions/transactions
Stamford, Conn., researcher Gartner Inc. has completed its acquisition of Arlington, Va., insight and technology company CEB Inc.
Yelp, San Francisco, has acquired Toronto-based Wi-Fi marketing company Turnstyle Analytics Inc. Turnstyle’s technology lets consumers tap into free guest Wi-Fi while helping businesses re-engage those customers in the future via e-mail. Combining the offline data with Yelp’s online and mobile search data will provide an intent-based marketing resource to local businesses.
Harris Williams & Co., a Richmond, Va., investment bank, announced the pending sale of Chicago-based marketing intelligence firm Market Track LLC to Vista Equity Partners, Austin, Texas.
Alliances/strategic partnerships
Mobile marketing services firm 3Cinteractive, Boca Raton, Fla., has partnered with independent wine retailer Total Wine & More. 3Cinteractive will use its Switchblade platform to deliver digital coupons through e-mail that can be added to a customer’s mobile wallet for in-store redemption, as well as create brand exposure on the customer’s mobile device.
In the U.K., customer experience technology and services company MaritzCX has formed a partnership with mobile survey technology firm OnePoint Global. The partnership allows the integration of SMS as an additional feedback tool which is complementary to existing CX survey architecture.
In Norwalk, Conn., Shopcom, the advertising analytics and insights division of Kantar Worldpanel, and marketing solutions firm Affinity Solutions have formed a new partnership, giving brand marketers and agencies a way to conduct cross-screen media planning, targeting and closed-loop measurement. The integration of Affinity Solutions’ Purchase-Driven Marketing Cloud allows Shopcom to use past individual-level purchase data to help brands and advertisers make future spend predictions and measure overall sales lift and revenue impact from in-store and online channels.
Reston, Va., firm comScore is working with Google to provide independent brand safety reporting of advertising campaigns on YouTube. The collaboration is part of Google’s efforts to provide advertisers with greater visibility into the context in which their ads appear.
Fishkill, N.Y., incentive solutions provider Virtual Incentives has partnered with Stamford, Conn., research company FocusVision to provide rewards and incentives for the company’s clients and users. Virtual Incentives’ API is now fully integrated into Decipher, FocusVision’s online survey solution, to boost respondent experience and engagement.
France-based research firm Strategir and China-based researcher WisdomAsia have reported that they have stopped their partnership as of March 31. William Lu, former co-managing director of WisdomAsia, has started a new company named BlueGate Research & Consulting and has set up Strategir BlueGate, a new joint venture with Strategir.
Newton, Mass., software company MarketSight has formed a strategic partnership with Westport, Conn., data and insights firm Critical Mix. The alliance will allow users to integrate MarketSight’s data analysis platform with survey results created by CMIX, Critical Mix’s tool for creating insights.
Maritz Motivation Solutions, St. Louis, has formed a partnership with receipt-capture provider TPG Rewards Inc., adding to Maritz’s customer loyalty solution by letting marketers build loyalty with customers at the point of sale through customers’ mobile devices. The partnership will allow receipt capture technology to be used with long-term loyalty program strategies, where consumers can earn redeemable points for their ongoing purchases.
Auburn Hills, Mich., researcher Gongos Inc. and customer experience firm Customerville, Seattle, have formed a partnership to offer turnkey customer experience solutions. Customerville’s customer feedback platform uses technology, human-centric design and behavioral science to emulate how people naturally share and respond to feedback. Gongos will further pinpoint customer pain, identify gaps between brand promise and experience and help organizations design activation plans to enhance customer lifetime value.
Marking Canada’s 150th anniversary, Passport 2017 – a news and events app and Web site created by St. Joseph Media’s Strategic Content Labs and funded in part by the Government of Canada – is partnering with Toronto-based online data collection firm AskingCanadians to discover where Canadians want to go and what they want to see and do across Canada this year. Under the partnership, AskingCanadians will assist Passport 2017 with several research initiatives to gather feedback from Canadians.
In New York, Art Savitt, CEO of WACS Insights & Strategy, and Sharon Livingston, owner of The Livingston Group for Emotional Marketing Inc., have formed a strategic alliance to better serve their respective research customers through combined quantitative and qualitative resources.
Awards/rankings
The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), New York, announced the winners of The ARF David Ogilvy Awards. Some of the winners include: Grand Winner: “Take on TJ,” Nike; Big Data Gold: “Make America Number One,” Cambridge Analytica; Cross-Platform Gold: “Welcome to Johnsonville, Wisconsin,” Johnsonville Sausage; Impact on the World Gold: “TV Doctors of America,” Cigna; Mobile Gold: “Distant Memory,” Advil; New Audiences Gold: “Climb On,” Coors Light; Reinventing Traditional Media Gold: “Beautiful, Naturally Mobile Studio,” Garnet Hill; Social Media Gold: “Take on TJ,” Nike; and Transformation Gold: “Healthmetre,” Turkcell. A full list of winners can be found on the ARF Web site.
OSI Creative, an Irvine, Calif., point-of-purchase display company, received silver Outstanding Merchandising Achievement awards from Shop!, a nonprofit trade association. The company’s American Crew Guitar Case display won the award in the hair care and skin care permanent category and the Samsung Security Camera display was recognized in the club store permanent category.
New accounts/projects
In Paris, researcher Bakamo Social has partnered with journalist Pierre Haski for a study showing the reach and impact of unconventional media sources in connection with the 2017 French presidential election. The non-traditional sources are categorized in a Media Map, a classification model that reflects a source’s distance from traditional media sources like newspapers, radio and television. Impact will be measured by the extent to which articles from non-traditional sources are shared through social media, in both absolute terms and in relation to articles shared from traditional sources.
London-based advertising agency System1 Agency has been appointed by The ESOMAR Foundation, ESOMAR’s charity arm, to manage its global advertising account. The agency will create a global communications campaign for the foundation that will run later this year.
New companies/new divisions/relocations/expansions
Digital marketing agency Omnicore has opened a new office in Dubai, UAE, giving businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs in the region access to digital marketing services and campaigns.
U.K. research firm BrainJuicer has rebranded as System1 Group, which is comprised of System1 Agency and System1 Research.
Healthcare Research & Analytics has relocated from Parsippany, N.J., to a new corporate headquarters in Cranbury, N.J. The move allows the firm to be in the same location as the other businesses of its parent company Michael J. Hennessy Associates Inc.
451 Marketing, Boston, will begin operating under a new name, Agency 451, accompanied by a new corporate identity and a new Web site. The company offers research and analytics, creative, strategy, advertising, digital marketing, public relations and social media.
Kansas City, Mo., marketing analytics firm Alight Analytics has launched Insight Group, a new division that will provide analytics consulting and training for brands and agencies. The company is also making available its professional training program, Marketing Analytics Academy.
In Chicago, communications agency Leo Burnett has launched The Core, an integrated data and analytics offering led by Chief Intelligence Officer John Lowell. The Core combines the firm’s existing research and CRM specialties with the proprietary Ardent search technology that the agency acquired in January.
Watertown, Mass., marketing and public relations firm Greenough Brand Storytellers has launched Brand Journalism Research, a new research offering that helps clients develop their brand journalism programs. The offering includes concepting, research design, execution, analysis and recommendations for converting insights into brand journalism strategies across earned and paid media channels.
Research company earnings/financial news
U.K. insight agency Firefish has reported a 15 percent increase in group revenue over the past year, from £10.1 million to £11.7 million. The firm’s kids and family consultancy, The Pineapple Lounge, has reported an increase of 86 percent from the previous year, while Firefish’s quantitative business, the numbers lab, reported a 27 percent rise in revenue. Firefish US reported a 40 percent increase in revenue from the previous year.
Research software company Remesh, New York, has closed a $2.25 million seed investment round, bringing its total funding to $3.85 million. The round was led by venture capital firm LionBird Ventures and also included holding company Reimagine Holdings Group as well as individual investors.
MFour Mobile Research, Irvine, Calif., has partnered with Kayne NewRoad Ventures Fund for $5 million in new investment that will be used to scale technology and research staff, with more than $2 million dedicated to marketing its MFourDIY survey platform. The remainder of the investment will be used to expand internationally and scale its staff by adding to its Labs & Engineering, Operations and Sales departments. Separately, MFour Mobile Research reported that it has received $680,000 in tax credits from California’s state government under the California Competes job creation program. The credit is contingent on MFour adding at least 77 full-time staff positions in California over a five-year span from 2017 to 2021, but the company says it expects to surpass that target before 2021.
In Dallas, Hal Brierley, founder of Epsilon, e-Rewards (now Research Now), Brierley+Partners and The Brierley Group, has made a strategic investment in insights technology company UBMobile and joined its board of directors.
New Orleans-based audience platform Lucid Holdings LLC has reported a $60 million minority investment led by private equity firm North Bridge Growth Equity. The capital raised will be used to accelerate growth by advancing product development, design and to expand Lucid’s team in the U.S. and internationally.