Virtual Surveys Hires for New Online Communities Team

UK agency Virtual Surveys has hired former Harris researcher Andy Buckley to head up its rapidly expanding work in the online communities area. He leads a specialist team formed only in the summer and already boasting nine people.

Buckley worked at B&MR, which became part of Wirthlin and then Harris Interactive, totalling eleven years at the three companies. Earlier, he cut his teeth in the financial practice at ORC International. In addition to online research, he has focused on b2b and customer satisfaction research, and for the last six years been a specialist in employee research. He worked most recently as Deputy Head of Research in Harris' Manchester office.

His new team includes former NOP and Harris exec Paul Child, an Associate Director, and Research Manager Colette Wright.

'I've always been a specialist researcher' Buckley told DRNO, 'but in a range of specialisms. This is like the other end of the spectrum to some things I've done, and it's an exciting new area to get into. Many of the skills required are quite different to those of the traditional researcher, but the team includes some people, like Paul and myself, with more traditional MR experience, and some with a more technical background who manage the communities and the IT platform.'

Buckley says two key benefits of the communities, which are set up specifically for the research and not publicly accessible, are the ability of participants to influence the agenda originally set by the client and agency; and the scope for hearing all participants' voices. 'In a focus group, very often the loudest voices dominate and online it can be the fastest typists! - but here there is more time for individuals to think about their answers and get their say, maybe over a period of a couple of days, and provide their responses to other community members' opinions.'

Buckley will report to Quentin Ashby, MD of Virtual Surveys.

Virtual Surveys, founded in 1998 by former RI and Simon Godfrey Associates Director, Pete Comley, pioneered the area of web site research in Europe, along with many aspects of online data collection. The company is online at www.virtualsurveys.com .