Our Annual Congress is a celebration of revelations

In the last few days, I have attended and spoken at the ESOMAR Congress in Dublin trying to get the pulse from our members, the market research community, and its associations. I wanted to get a sense of what is driving the research sector in the coming years and also understand the hurdles that will need to be overcome to achieve this sector’s potential. 

ESOMAR’s first Privacy Talk: Getting to Data Serenity

We had a well-attended ESOMAR Privacy Talk on Sunday 27 September, with brave souls coming on a Sunday at 8h30 in the morning to get a full update on the intelligence gathered by our Government Affairs team and the compliance guidance issued by our Professional Standards team. There’s been a lot going on particularly on the familiar hot topic of data handling, protection, and privacy.

From Europe entering the final phase of its data protection reform, to the United States moving to lock down the usage possibilities for auto diallers, it is great to see that the sector is getting to grips with the importance of getting this issue right not just for our businesses but also for the respondents who entrust their opinions, sentiments and aspirations to us.

We’ve been talking about 5 essential steps that companies can take to reach “data serenity.” They focus on the aspects that regulators continuously take companies to task over. With over €40 million worth of fines being issued globally according to our own Fines Trackers on data protection violations, we want to make sure small research players don’t get caught unawares.

It’s important to get the right balance and mix between a participant-centric design and execution of research projects, investing in talent on data protection and privacy, data flow management, data security, transparency, and effective partnership management.

Delegates attending our Congress all have received a copy of the slides we produced for the presentation.

Associations better equipped for the future

The market, social, and opinion research sector might not be the largest of economic sectors, but it still has a family of 60+ national and international associations working to elevate professional standards, promote and defend the interests of research. Many have been hard at work for decades to ensure that research is conducted in a trustworthy, professional, and respectful manner.

At our Congress every year we organise a meet-up of association leaders and representatives to take stock of the accomplishments in different markets and make sure we have a shared awareness of challenges coming our way.

This year the theme of our Meet-Up was "Associations Better Equipped for the Future." We talked about the central role that professional standards and advocacy are going to play to guarantee the future of our sector.

We had great examples of new collaborations like the plans by ESOMAR and EFAMRO to adopt a joint strategic position paper to set out a future vision of the industry and the role that governments, and other actors can play to support the sector to continue to deliver better insights for the future.

Associations are also clearly committed to raising our voices to shout about the social value of market research by putting in place new initiatives like ESOMAR’s forthcoming 25 Eureka’s of Market Research, a new publication that catalogues 25 case studies of research delivering impacts on societies and economies around the world using a wealth of different methodologies.

GRBN, the network of research associations is also getting in the act working hard to put together a new public trust campaign that aims to refresh and rekindle a trust value chain with research project participants.

There’s a lot of work facing us but by working together and celebrating the value of research at a time when concerns are running high. But this sector has made ethics a central plank of its value offer and now is the time to make the most of it.  Our Congress is about revelations, and as was said in our Congress opening... we are the sector that specialises in making revelations that illuminate societies across the world.