Event Research Specialist Launched

In the US, Audience Insights founder Kevin O'Neill and creative veteran Christopher Korody have announced the formation of a new partnership, Audience Metrix LLC, dedicated to measuring and analysing marketers' ROI from customer events.

The pair's experience of on-site research for enterprise IT companies, associations and commercial tradeshows spans twenty years. They began working together in 2001, on post-event analysis for PeopleSoft, and have since collaborated on annual projects for George P Johnson clients Sun Microsystems, JavaOne and AMD.

In addition to starting Audience Insights, O'Neill was VP of Research at Business Research Group and worked at Booz Allen. Korody founded ckwrites.com and was a senior creative with Dick Clark, Jack Morton Worldwide and George P Johnson. They are joined in the new company by deMarie Malnar, who recently left CA Technologies after six years as its Director of Global Event Marketing and Communication.

O'Neill says of the motives for the new venture: 'Event budgets regularly exceed SuperBowl ad buys... yet measuring event results against business goals is often an afterthought. At the same time, CMO's are being asked to show a return on every dollar. Our research enables corporate event sponsors to demonstrate their contribution to the topline.'

Korody says he and O'Neill have previously been focusing on different things, but adds 'when SAP renewed our contract for the 2012 SAPPHIRE NOW program, we knew that the timing was right to bring our proven offering to market.'

The company will use custom instruments hosted on a cloud-based system, data from attendees' handheld devices, and registration and session evaluations, and then perform SPSS-based segmentation studies as well as qualitative analysis based on text analytics. Among other activities, it is developing research programs based client corporations' own critical success indicators, and plans to examine the correlation between attendees' event experience and the Twitter comments generated.

Malnar comments: 'I really hadn't considered joining a consulting firm. What appeals to me is that Audience Metrix is already looking at the issues my management was starting to ask me about.'

Web site: www.audiencemetrix.com.